When discovering basionym links and consolidating such homotypic groups we bail out in case there are multiple original names with the same epithet and author existing. There are legid cases of species with the same terminal epithet in the same family described by the same author and sometimes even year. But I fear that by far most cases we see are due to erroneous data.
I would like to investigate more about cases and metrics in the XRelease to understand if we should not better extend the homotypic grouping to all epithets and only ignore the homotypic groups where multiple basionyms exist in the source with the highest priority - which in most cases will be the base release itself. This keeps us safe from modify the base release, but allows to defend a sane taxonomy when merging from the many sources.
When discovering basionym links and consolidating such homotypic groups we bail out in case there are multiple original names with the same epithet and author existing. There are legid cases of species with the same terminal epithet in the same family described by the same author and sometimes even year. But I fear that by far most cases we see are due to erroneous data.
I would like to investigate more about cases and metrics in the XRelease to understand if we should not better extend the homotypic grouping to all epithets and only ignore the homotypic groups where multiple basionyms exist in the source with the highest priority - which in most cases will be the base release itself. This keeps us safe from modify the base release, but allows to defend a sane taxonomy when merging from the many sources.