connorjburgin
commented
1 year ago Eulipotyphla vs. Lipotyphla (+) – Eulipotyphla has become the primarily used name for the group in most settings at this point, but much of the current literature is heavily influenced by our decision to use Eulipotyphla and the MDD and in the HMW series. This is what we put about ordinal names on the MDD’s about page, which highlights that Lipotyphla has been applied do various different inclusive definitions of different insectivore groups whereas Eulipotyphla is the first to apply to the modern interpretation of the order according to Woodman 2018: ‘Higher-level taxonomy.— Regarding higher-level taxonomy (i.e., all ranks above the species level), the MDD maintains an updated listing of all taxonomic ranks traditionally used below the order level as well as major superordinal clades. However, higher-level taxa do not yet have individual webpages, so this information is not yet fully transparent. For future updates, we intend to include individual taxonomic pages for each higher-level taxon in a similar format as the species-level pages. Ordinal names generally follow the arrangement presented in MSW3 with updates based on recent phylogenetic studies, resulting in Soricomorpha + Erinaceomorpha as Eulipotyphla, and Cetacea + Artiodactyla as a united Artiodactyla. The name Artiodactyla is preferred over the name Cetartiodactyla following the recommendation of Asher and Helgen (2010), which recalled the principles of Simpson (1945) to balance prevailing usage with priority in naming higher taxa. Asher and Helgen (2010) also recommended using Lipotyphla over Eulipotyphla, but confusion around the association of Lipotyphla with past definitions of the paraphyletic Insectivora assemblage (Woodman 2018) has prompted the MDD to favor Eulipotyphla as the first name used for the current definition of the order.’
Echinosorex gymnura vs. gymnurus (-) – given that Raffles name was lowercase, I think that retaining the name as an adjective would be more plausible. However, I’ll side with Hesperomys in this case and change the name to gymnura.
Otohylomys megalotis (-!) – I definitely appear to have just completely missed this (HMW doesn’t seem to have recognized it and I haven’t checked the reason why…), I’ll go ahead and make the move from Hylomys to Otohylomys: Bannikova, A.A., Лебедев, В.С., Абрамов, А.В. and Рожнов, В.В. 2014-06-04. Contrasting evolutionary history of hedgehogs and gymnures (Mammalia: Erinaceomorpha) as inferred from a multigene study. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 112(3):499-519. doi:10.1111/bij.12299
Crocidura anselli vs. ansellorum, greenwoodi vs. greenwoodae (-) – leaving it for now like the other ones, but we’ll have some further discussion on this.
Crocidura dongyangjiangensis and C. huangshanensis (+) – I’ll look into changing dongyangjiangensis from 2020 to 2019, but this might be a hard one to interpret.
Crocidura tarfayaensis vs. tarfayensis (-) – I’ll change the spelling to match Hesperomys on the MDD.
Chimarrogale vs. Crossogale (-) – I think I’ll go ahead and remove Crossogale again (I’ve gone back and forth about this one). I don’t agree with recognizing it either (Kai He and I made the decision not to include it in the HMW volume), but I had added it back after to the MDD for some reason.
Episoriculus vs. Pseudosoriculus (-) – I don’t think the HMW recognized it because we hadn’t seen the publication and we would have recognized it if we had seen the publication (either that or Kai He didn’t want to recognize it because he didn’t want to accept work from those authors). I strongly support recognizing Pseudosoriculus as a genus given the evidence.
Sorex monticolus vs. S. monticola (-) – I’m leaving this one for now because of just how many times I’ve gone back and forth about it, but I’ll clarify the comments about following Woodman 2018 on the spelling. I’m sure you’re probably right about this, but this one needs to be discussed further because it seems like nobody can decide which interpretation is correct.
Suncus varilla vs. S. varillus (-) – I’ll change the spelling to varilla following Hesperomys, I don’t really know why I even have varillus.
JelleZijlstra
Following #22, #23, #26, #27, this installment covers the insectivores. This was rather simpler than I expected, probably because I recently went over the HMW volume for insectivores. Still, there are some disagreements that merit further discussion.
Eulipotyphla
Straightforward accepted changes
Articles not yet seen:
Eulipotyphla vs. Lipotyphla (+)
I haven't systematically looked for discrepancies in classification above the genus level, but noticed here that MDD has Eulipotyphla while I have Lipotyphla. I like Lipotyphla better because it is shorter and Asher & Helgen (2010) supported it, but Eulipotyphla seems to be the current consensus so I'll switch. Interestingly, a lot of the Russian literature uses Lipotyphla instead.
Ref: Asher, R.J. and Helgen, K.M. 2010. Nomenclature and placental mammal phylogeny. BMC Evolutionary Biology 10(102):1-9. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-10-102
Erinaceidae
Echinosorex gymnura vs. gymnurus (-)
MDD has gymnurus, I have gymnura, which is the traditional form.
The original combination was Viverra gymnura. If you interpret that as an adjective, then it should indeed be gymnurus in combination with masculine Echinosorex, but interpreting it as a noun in apposition would allow to preserve the prevailing spelling. However, Raffles writes gymnura in lowercase, which in his work is usually an indication that the specific name is an adjective.
AI: Confirm
Otohylomys megalotis (-!)
MDD places Hylomys megalotis in Hylomys without comments, I place it in the separate genus Otohylomys.
This was named by Bannikova et al. (2014) on the basis of solid molecular evidence.
Ref: Bannikova, A.A., Лебедев, В.С., Абрамов, А.В. and Рожнов, В.В. 2014-06-04. Contrasting evolutionary history of hedgehogs and gymnures (Mammalia: Erinaceomorpha) as inferred from a multigene study. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 112(3):499-519. doi:10.1111/bij.12299
Nesophontidae
Nesophontes paramicrus (+)
MDD recognizes Nesophontes paramicrus, I have it as a synonym of N. micrus.
Patterson (1962) and Rzebik-Kowalska & Wołoszyn (2012) suggested this synonymy, but it doesn't seem supported in the recent literature. I will accept the species.
Ref:
Soricidae
Crocidura anselli vs. ansellorum, greenwoodi vs. greenwoodae (-)
Another two cases like Pteropus giliardi.
Crocidura dongyangjiangensis and C. huangshanensis (+)
I missed these two new species that have since been synonymized under dongyangjiangensis.
You have the year of description as 2020. I can't read Chinese but I'm pretty sure the second-to-last paragraph of the paper synonymizing them is saying dongyangjiangensis was published on 2019-12-26 and huangshanensis on 2020-01-15. I can't confirm these dates (the API I use for DOI dates apparently doesn't cover the Chinese ones), and at least the description of dongyangjiangensis doesn't have an LSID, so the print publication date is what matters, not the online one.
Crocidura tarfayaensis vs. tarfayensis (-)
MDD has tarfayensis, I have tarfayaensis.
My spelling is the original (I recently found the original description online and can share it if you like).
Both spellings occur in the recent literature, so I don't see any reason not to use the original spelling. The alternative spelling tarfayensis apparently goes back to Honacki et al. (1982).
AI: Confirm and publish
Chimarrogale vs. Crossogale (-)
MDD has Crossogale as a separate genus, I have it within Chimarrogale.
I also added this genus when I saw Abramov et al. (2017), but HMW (vol. 8, p. 336) refused to recognize the genus, saying it was "rushed". Looking back at Abramov et al. (2017) I don't think the evidence for this revision is very strong. They only have cytb data for C. phaeura (=Crossogale), but the combined genus Chimarrogale appears to be monophyletic. So I think HMW's decision is right here.
Episoriculus vs. Pseudosoriculus (-)
This is a similar case, where MDD recognizes the newly named genus Pseudosoriculus (split from Episoriculus), but I don't because I was following HMW.
However, the evidence for this one is much stronger than for Crossogale. There is data from three different genes showing Pseudosoriculus fumidus is phylogenetically distant from the rest of Episoriculus. I'll wait for your reply on both of these cases but I'm inclined to accept the genus as valid.
Sorex monticolus vs. S. monticola (-)
MDD has monticola (with comments saying it is a noun in apposition), I have monticolus.
If the original spelling was monticola I'd agree with you, but the original spelling is in fact monticolus. Woodman (2018) argues that the original spelling was in error and notes that Merriam later corrected it to monticola. However, such an emendation is justified only if it's in prevailing usage, and I don't think this one qualifies (e.g. Google Scholar has 39 hits for Sorex monticola and 912 for Sorex monticolus).
Suncus varilla vs. S. varillus (-)
MDD has varillus, I have varilla.
This was originally named in combination with Crocidura (feminine) but is now in Suncus (masculine).
This word doesn't appear in Latin dictionaries I have checked, but it sounds like an adjective to me (cf. the -illus suffix). However, since there is uncertainty it might be better to stick with the original spelling.
AI: Confirm