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MDD/Hesperomys comparison: Primates #31

Open JelleZijlstra opened 1 year ago

JelleZijlstra commented 1 year ago

See #22, #23, #26, #27, #28, #29 for the previous issues. cc @connorjburgin

The biggest disagreement here is around the platyrrhine generic splits. There is also a difference in family-level taxonomy among the platyrrhines, and a taxonomic mess in Cebus.

Primates

Straightforward accepted changes

Patronym changes (Pteropus gilliardi-type) that we're provisionally keeping unchanged:

New World monkey genera (+?)

There have been several generic splits proposed recently among New World monkeys:

In all cases, there is no doubt about the monophyly of the genus that was split up.

I currently accept none of these splits; MDD accepts the Cebus and Callicebus split but not the Saguinus ones.

I'm not fond of any of these splits. The arguments about ecological and behavioral distinctness are fine I suppose, but as long as there is no agreed-upon definition of a genus they aren't very convincing. The divergence time arguments at least give hope for a consistent criterion for recognizing genera, but when people use this argument they usually cite Goodman et al. (1998). That paper proposed merging Cacajao and Chiropotes (and Homo and Pan), and nobody has wanted to follow that, so divergence time arguments also feel like special pleading to me.

However, these are subjective decisions and most of these splits seem to have been broadly accepted, so I'll probably have to follow suit. I'm not sure I see a principled reason to accept the Cebus and Callicebus splits but not the Saguinus one.

Atelidae

Alouatta villosa vs. A. pigra (+)

I use Alouatta villosa, MDD uses A. pigra.

I don't find the arguments for pigra very compelling, but I'll accept this one for consistency with the literature.

Lagothrix lagothricha vs. lagotricha (-)

I use lagotricha, MDD uses lagothricha.

The original spelling is lagotricha. A lot of the literature also uses this spelling (it actually gets more hits in Google Scholar than lagothricha), so I think we should stick with the original.

Callithrichidae

Callitrichinae vs. Callitrichidae vs. Callithrichidae (?)

I put the marmosets and tamarins in subfamily Callithrichinae of Cebidae; MDD recognizes a separate family Callitrichidae.

Looking at recent phylogenetic studies, my version of Cebidae is paraphyletic because Aotus falls within the cebinae-callitrichine clade, so something will need to change: either Aotus should go into Cebidae or Callitrichinae should become a family. MDD currently chooses the latter option. However, several recent sources (e.g., Wang et al., 2019; Silvestro et al., 2019) choose the former option instead. I like that because it creates a more informative classification; the three-family option leaves us without a name for the Cebidae/Callitrichidae/Aotidae clade. It's a subjective decision so I am happy to go with either; I'm curious what the motivation is for MDD's classification.

Separately, there is an issue of spelling. The genus name is Callithrix with an h, so I use the subfamily name Callithrichinae, but the family-group name is almost invariably spelled without an h in the literature (including in MDD), as Callitrichidae or Callitrichinae. If there's a rule of Greek grammar that leads to this change, I'm not aware of it. However, this spelling goes back to Thomas (1903) who first named the family.

AI: Confirm and publish about the spelling of the family name.

Cebidae

Cebus sensu stricto (-)

Within Cebus sensu stricto (i.e. excluding Sapajus), I recognize four species, and MDD recognizes an additional 11 following Boubli et al. (2012), while noting that the taxonomy is highly contentious. I haven't fully attempted to understand all the disagreements here, but I noticed that Ruiz-García et al. (2018) reviewed Ecuadorian Cebus more recently and found no support for the species status of Cebus aequatorialis. All of these studies have just been based on mtDNA too, which might be muddying things up more.

I'm open to changing to the many-species classification, but wanted to hear your thoughts first.

Cercopithecidae

Lophocebus species (-)

I recognize six species of Lophocebus; MDD merges them into only two, citing the Red List, which in turn says that this was the consensus at a workshop. However, both HMW and Mammals of Africa list the full six species. I'd like to stick with that until there is a real published study to the contrary.

Piliocolobus lulindicus (-)

MDD recognizes this species as distinct from P. foai; I don't. Mammals of Africa has foai and lulindicus as separate subspecies of rufomitratus; HMW has foai as a species with lulindicus as a junior synonym.

MDD cites the Red List, but the account essentially says that it is recognized as distinct because it is threatened. That's not a convincing taxonomic argument.

Trachypithecus crepuscula -> T. crepusculus (+)

I have crepuscula, MDD has crepusculus.

I'll accept the change for now since crepusculus is common in the literature, but I'm not convinced this is right since I can't find an adjective crepusculus. There is a Latin word crepusculum "darkness" but I'm not sure how it applies; Elliot described the fur as pale when he named the species.

AI: Confirm and maybe change back to crepuscula.

Cheirogaleidae

Microcebus mittermeieri (-)

I lump this species under M. lehilahytsara; MDD recognizes it, saying that further work is needed to confirm the synonymy.

MDD doesn't cite the reference I was using for the synonymy (Poelstra et al., 2021). I thought the genetic evidence in that paper was convincing, but I'm happy to add the species back if you disagree.

Ref: Poelstra, J.W., Salmona, J., Tiley, G.P., Schüßler, D., Blanco, M.B., Andriambeloson, J.B., Bouchez, O., Campbell, C.R., Etter, P.D., Hohenlohe, P.A., Hunnicutt, K.E., Iribar, A., Johnson, E.A., Kappeler, P.M., Larsen, P.A., Manzi, S., Ralison, J.M., Randrianambinina, B., Rasoloarison, R.M., Rasolofoson, D.W., Stahlke, A.R., Weisrock, D.W., Williams, R.C., Chikhi, L., Louis, E.E., Radespiel, U., Yoder, A.D. and Esselstyn, J.A. 2021. Cryptic patterns of speciation in cryptic primates: microendemic mouse lemurs and the multispecies coalescent. Systematic Biology 70(2):203-218. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syaa053

Indriidae

Avahi ramanantsoavani vs. ramanantsoavanai (-)

I use the spelling without the -a-, MDD includes it.

The former (ramanantsoavani) is the original and correct spelling. The first usage of the ramanantsoavanai spelling which I have found is in Markolf et al. (2011), where it looks accidental (they also misspell peyrierasi a few lines up). Possibly this spelling change was intentional since the species was named after Georges Ramanantsoavana, but I don't see a justification for changing the name; it's legitimate to elide the -a when forming a patronym.

Ref: Markolf, M., Brameier, M. and Kappeler, P.M. 2011-12. On species delimitation: Yet another lemur species or just genetic variation?. BMC Evolutionary Biology 11(126):1-7. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-11-216

AI: Confirm and publish

Pitheciidae

I was happy to see we ended up with the same classification for Cacajao. I had to dig quite a bit a few weeks ago to understand what's going on here; I wrote up my notes at http://hesperomys.com/n/46731 (bottom of the page). I think it may be worth publishing about this. Though now I see that Silva et al. (2013) map melanocephalus, ouakary, hosomi, and ayresi all in different places, so may be it's more complicated than I thought.

connorjburgin commented 1 year ago

Before I give my full response (which will likely be long winded...) I wanted to clarify that the Primate taxonomy has been heavily influenced by Russel Mittermeier and Anthony Rylands decisions in the Handbook of the Mammals of the World and the Illustrated Checklist of the Mammals of the World, both of which I had pretty big gripes about, but given that Primates are a group of considerable conservation concern, I have often opted to include species rather than lump them (although my idea of a species in Cebus would preferable be the four species model at the moment). Considering that I'm trying to move away from using the Handbooks as justification, I am considering making a number of changes to Primate taxonomy, although this would deviate pretty heavily from what the IUCN recognizes, which they keep very good track of taxonomic changes for this group in particular (which the MDD already deviates from on a number of cases).

connorjburgin commented 1 year ago

Comments on Primates

Lepilemur randrianasoli -> L. randrianasoloi Lepilemur sahamalazensis -> L. sahamalaza (for these two, missed the nomenclatural change)

Also, both Lepilemur aeeclis and L. otto were redescribed as well without changes to their spellings: Craul, M., Zimmermann, E., Rasoloharijaona, S., Randrianambinina, B., & Radespiel, U. (2017). Corrective paper concerning two new species of the genus Lepilemur Geoffroy, 1851 (Mammalia). Dumerilia, 7, 72-77. Andriaholinirina, N., Fausser, J.-L., Roos, C., Zinner, D., Thalmann, U., et al (2017). Corrective paper concerning three new species of the genus Lepilemur Geoffroy, 1851 (Mammalia). Dumerilia, 7, 62–71.

Nycticebus pygmaeus -> Xanthonycticebus (though I would have preferred a subgenus) – I actually like this one just because of the name, but yeah, its kind of a redundant split.

Lepilemur wrighti vs. wrightae (interestingly you don't adopt Lepilemur tymerlachsonorum, possibly because it was not directly based on a name) – yeah, it wasn’t, and the HMW commented on this; I followed the HMW spellings for primates pretty closely, which explains this a bit.

Noticed that you did change Chiropotes utahickae to utahicki, citing CMW. I haven't seen that book so I'm curious what the motivation was. I checked the original description and it was definitely named after a woman. Same for Aotus nancymaae vs. nancymai.

I think this one was pretty heavily discussed a while back when the illustrated checklist was being written (Russell Mittermeier and Anthony Rylands advocated for just this spelling change but not the Lepilemur ones?). That being said, it goes against what I’ve typical done on the MDD, but I’ll leave it for now until we’ve discussed this a bit more.

New World Monkey genera – I’ll do my best to keep this succinct. Overall, all three are kind of subjective decisions (although the Sapajus one is most justified in my opinion) and the greater primatological community has variously rejected and accepted these changes (although its mostly the taxonomists accepting it and the other primatologists rejecting it).

Sapajus and Cebus – So, this one where I actually prefer the spilt. It has the strongest evidence given the morphological and behavioral distinctions that are distributed between the two genera monophyletically (unlike in the Lasiurus case in Chiroptera). I think that even in a monophyletic situation, having multiple genera provides a more generalized functionality to the group within reason, especially since genera are a heavily used species organization level despite being poorly defined. Although subgenera are used fairly commonly and I think are useful in describing clades within a genus, I tend to want a group to be recognized as a genus if it has morphological, behavioral, and molecular monophyly that allows for the consistent differentiation from other clades in its family/subfamily/tribe. But that is my personal opinion on how subgenera and genera should be loosely defined, and I think that the recognition of separate genera just to split up monophyletic clades is a flimsy reasoning, as well as the argument that sympatry has anything to do with generic recognition. I also feel that in cases where, at least in mammals, there is evidence of hybridization, they should usually be treated as the same genus (although in the case of delphinids, I would say I’m less strict on this rule given the hybridization between distantly related genera…). I’ll be continuing to recognize Sapajus and Cebus given the more robust justification and that it has become a more commonly used arrangement in many places (although there are still plenty of publications that don’t use it).

Cheracebus and Plecturocebus from Callicebus – I’ve continued to recognize this because major conservation organizations continue to use it and there are no papers that currently directly refute this arrangement. The time based generic definition I think is valid, although just based on that alone, I don’t think it’s the best evidence to use for this clade. There are also morphological distinctions between the different genera, although it is mostly based on relative coat pattern consistency within each genus. I don’t think there’s been anything using skull morphometrics to support the different genera, but the authors of the paper I think are overconfident that this arrangement is justified (and in my eyes, it’s not enough). I’m going to continue to recognize this split given that there hasn’t been much push back at this point and that conservation organizations are using this arrangements, but I would like to see more justification of the recognition of these genera as separate.

Leontocebus, Oedipomidas, and Tamarinus from Saguinus – Saguinus generic taxonomy makes my head hurt at this point (same with Cebus species recognition, but we’ll get to that below…). I have seen Brcko et al., 2022, but had forgot to look into it more, as I was pretty done with trying to figure out what to do with this group. I have gone back and forth about recognizing Leontocebus as separate and have never recognized Oedipomidas and Tamarinus at this point. This is because of the considerable pushback Garbino’s team has put out has convinced me of the redundancy of these changes. However, following the MDDs rules, the Brcko et al., 2022 paper is the most recent, and it was followed in another revision recently (reference below, I haven’t added this split yet, but I will be). Leontocebus has been adopted by the IUCN but Oedipomidas and Tamarinus have not at this point (although I fell as if they will). I kind of want your input further on this one before I make a decision, but given that I am continuing to recognize the other two generic splits, it seems like I ‘should’ be recognizing these ones, which I disagree with more than the others and have had pushback. If you choose to accept the other two, what do you feel like doing with these genera?

Reference: Gregorin, R., Athaydes, D., Júnior, J. E. S., & Ayoub, T. B. (2023). Taxonomic status of Tamarinus imperator subgrisescens (Lönnberg, 1940)(Cebidae, Callitrichinae). Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia, 63, e202363005-e202363005.

On a side note, we should look into making a publication judging the consistency of how we define mammal genera across different mammal clades… we could get divergence estimates from various papers and build a big dataset for every living genus (it should be mostly available by now? Nate, you have that big phylogeny we can look at too).

Alouatta villosa vs. A. pigra (+) – yeah, it’s consistent with the literature at this point, but if you have a good explanation against it though, I’d like to hear it even if we don’t accept it at this point.

Lagothrix lagothricha vs. lagotricha (-) – I’ll make the change to match Hesperomys on the MDD.

Callitrichinae vs. Callitrichidae vs. Callithrichidae (?) – This ones another thing I’ve gone back and forth about but have settled on now (although not the spelling…). I originally included Cebidae, Aotidae, and Callitrichidae in a single family and was planning on doing so in the illustrated checklist, but Russell Mittermeier and Anthony Rylands were persistent in their opinion of recognizing them as separate families rather than a single family. After thinking about it a bit, I do agree with them, especially given that I recognize Sminthidae and Zapodidae as separate from Dipodidae. I’m motivated to keep them as separate because of their distinct ecologies, considerable morphological distinctions, and divergence times, which are consistent with family recognition in a number of other mammalian clades. However, in a similar case to genera, this is pretty subjective, as there is not a completely set upon definition of a family. I think the definition of families in the platyrrhines is different then what we’ve done for the catarrhines and it kind of bugs me, as we should be consistent at least within the same order. This is because the species diversity between these two clades are similar with similar crown group divergence times and morphological/ecological diversity, but we still call Cercopithecidae a single family and recognize 3-5 families of platyrrhines.

For the spelling, I think it comes down to what the oldest name for the group was, which is Callitrichidae Gray, 1821 (under I think as a subfamily name?) over Callithrichidae Thomas, 1903 (he might have spelt it Callitrhicidae). However, I don’t think name priority is completely based on age at the family level according to the code and I also don’t think it matters whether the name was first used as a subfamily, family, or tribe, it still can be moved between those levels and have the same authority (I’m not as well versed on family name usage, but if the name Callitrichinae was first used at the subfamily level, it still has priority over later names describing the same clade at the family and tribal level, but the ending just changes to -idae or -inae; I think the same goes for superfamily too). Callitrichidae/Callitrichinae is the most commonly used spelling at this point, so I’ve retained it to avoid confusion at this point. I’d like to hear more about your opinion with it though. I’m going to keep my spelling for now.

Cebus sensu stricto (-) – Jane Widness and I gripe about this a lot… I’ve used the HMW taxonomy for the genus because Russell had me use it in the illustrated checklist and the IUCN recognizes something close to this arrangement. But I REALLY hate this arrangement and would like to go back to a four species arrangement for now, which I think I will do unless someone has a problem with it.

Lophocebus species (-) – This was a weird one that Russell and Anthony actually wanted to lump, which is not normal for him. Regardless, I will add the species back for now until something comes out going against this arrangement.

Piliocolobus lulindicus (-) – Another one added based on comments from Russel and Anthony with no justification; will be removing it.

Microcebus mittermeieri (-) – Russell and Anthony wanted to keep it, I wanted it removed and initially had it removed. Will be removing it.

Avahi ramanantsoavani vs. ramanantsoavanai (-) – I will make the change to match Hesperomys on the MDD.

Cacajao – yeah, this one was not fun at all and there are multiple people still going back and forth about it. I chose to just go with what Russell and Anthony wanted for this group (they gave me a LONG email explanation about their decision). The distributions were switched around and the names moved in various directions, and I think the MDD has the arrangement and distribution ‘correct’ for what we decided to follow at this point.

JelleZijlstra commented 1 year ago

Also, both Lepilemur aeeclis and L. otto were redescribed as well without changes to their spellings: Craul, M., Zimmermann, E., Rasoloharijaona, S., Randrianambinina, B., & Radespiel, U. (2017). Corrective paper concerning two new species of the genus Lepilemur Geoffroy, 1851 (Mammalia). Dumerilia, 7, 72-77. Andriaholinirina, N., Fausser, J.-L., Roos, C., Zinner, D., Thalmann, U., et al (2017). Corrective paper concerning three new species of the genus Lepilemur Geoffroy, 1851 (Mammalia). Dumerilia, 7, 62–71.

Yes, I got those too, along with articles in the same issue about Arabitragus/Nilgiritragus and the tribes of Murinae. I believe those aren't relevant to the MDD since you're not tracking authorship above the species level. Thanks for pointing the way.

New World Monkey genera – I’ll do my best to keep this succinct. Overall, all three are kind of subjective decisions (although the Sapajus one is most justified in my opinion) and the greater primatological community has variously rejected and accepted these changes (although its mostly the taxonomists accepting it and the other primatologists rejecting it).

Sapajus and Cebus – So, this one where I actually prefer the spilt. It has the strongest evidence given the morphological and behavioral distinctions that are distributed between the two genera monophyletically (unlike in the Lasiurus case in Chiroptera). I think that even in a monophyletic situation, having multiple genera provides a more generalized functionality to the group within reason, especially since genera are a heavily used species organization level despite being poorly defined. Although subgenera are used fairly commonly and I think are useful in describing clades within a genus, I tend to want a group to be recognized as a genus if it has morphological, behavioral, and molecular monophyly that allows for the consistent differentiation from other clades in its family/subfamily/tribe. But that is my personal opinion on how subgenera and genera should be loosely defined, and I think that the recognition of separate genera just to split up monophyletic clades is a flimsy reasoning, as well as the argument that sympatry has anything to do with generic recognition. I also feel that in cases where, at least in mammals, there is evidence of hybridization, they should usually be treated as the same genus (although in the case of delphinids, I would say I’m less strict on this rule given the hybridization between distantly related genera…). I’ll be continuing to recognize Sapajus and Cebus given the more robust justification and that it has become a more commonly used arrangement in many places (although there are still plenty of publications that don’t use it).

Cheracebus and Plecturocebus from Callicebus – I’ve continued to recognize this because major conservation organizations continue to use it and there are no papers that currently directly refute this arrangement. The time based generic definition I think is valid, although just based on that alone, I don’t think it’s the best evidence to use for this clade. There are also morphological distinctions between the different genera, although it is mostly based on relative coat pattern consistency within each genus. I don’t think there’s been anything using skull morphometrics to support the different genera, but the authors of the paper I think are overconfident that this arrangement is justified (and in my eyes, it’s not enough). I’m going to continue to recognize this split given that there hasn’t been much push back at this point and that conservation organizations are using this arrangements, but I would like to see more justification of the recognition of these genera as separate.

Leontocebus, Oedipomidas, and Tamarinus from Saguinus – Saguinus generic taxonomy makes my head hurt at this point (same with Cebus species recognition, but we’ll get to that below…). I have seen Brcko et al., 2022, but had forgot to look into it more, as I was pretty done with trying to figure out what to do with this group. I have gone back and forth about recognizing Leontocebus as separate and have never recognized Oedipomidas and Tamarinus at this point. This is because of the considerable pushback Garbino’s team has put out has convinced me of the redundancy of these changes. However, following the MDDs rules, the Brcko et al., 2022 paper is the most recent, and it was followed in another revision recently (reference below, I haven’t added this split yet, but I will be). Leontocebus has been adopted by the IUCN but Oedipomidas and Tamarinus have not at this point (although I fell as if they will). I kind of want your input further on this one before I make a decision, but given that I am continuing to recognize the other two generic splits, it seems like I ‘should’ be recognizing these ones, which I disagree with more than the others and have had pushback. If you choose to accept the other two, what do you feel like doing with these genera?

Thanks for writing this up, this is very useful context. I think my hesitance about these changes comes from the idea that scientific names are a tool of communication for everyone working with these animals, not just taxonomists but also ecologists, conservationists, zookeepers, etc. Every time a taxonomic name changes, these people may have to adapt to new names when the old ones may have served perfectly fine for communication. As taxonomists, we have a metaphorical budget of name changes we can unleash until the non-taxonomists get rightfully annoyed about all those constantly changing names. If we use that budget for a change that reflects a real improvement in our knowledge about the relationships of some animal (as with Cercopithecus dryas being moved to Chlorocebus), that's a good use of the budget. But if the changes don't reflect an improvement in systematic knowledge, it's not a good use. In my mind, genus-level changes that don't fix non-monophyly generally don't meet the bar, since there are no widely accepted objective criteria for genus delimitation (other than monophyly). But at some point, if the change becomes widely enough accepted, resisting it is itself going to cause more confusion, so I'm open to adapting these new genera if they are likely to be widely accepted. For example, I initially rejected Nesogale as a separate genus when I read the paper proposing it, but accepted it when I saw that HMW had accepted the split.

At this point, the Sapajus split is probably sufficiently widely accepted that I will accept it. The titi split is a bit more recent but has also been accepted fairly widely, so I will follow suit.

For the tamarins, if your policy is to follow the latest taxonomic revision, I do think that implies you should go and recognize all four genera. But given that the two-genus classification received published pushback and the four-genus classification is still fairly recent, I personally think it makes sense to wait a bit. If you do decide to accept these genera I'll probably follow just for consistency.

On a side note, we should look into making a publication judging the consistency of how we define mammal genera across different mammal clades… we could get divergence estimates from various papers and build a big dataset for every living genus (it should be mostly available by now? Nate, you have that big phylogeny we can look at too).

Yes, that would be very interesting! Applying a consistent divergence-time criterion to all mammals would be a good exercise. Goodman et al. (1998) tried to do that for primates, but molecular methods have advanced a lot since.

A related project I've been thinking about is to review all known cases of nonmonophyly at the generic level and suggest solutions or avenues for further research.

Alouatta villosa vs. A. pigra (+) – yeah, it’s consistent with the literature at this point, but if you have a good explanation against it though, I’d like to hear it even if we don’t accept it at this point.

I felt Brandon-Jones did a pretty good job of showing the identity of the villosa type and the subsequent literature didn't really refute his arguments. I may not have read closely enough though.

Callitrichinae vs. Callitrichidae vs. Callithrichidae (?) – This ones another thing I’ve gone back and forth about but have settled on now (although not the spelling…). I originally included Cebidae, Aotidae, and Callitrichidae in a single family and was planning on doing so in the illustrated checklist, but Russell Mittermeier and Anthony Rylands were persistent in their opinion of recognizing them as separate families rather than a single family. After thinking about it a bit, I do agree with them, especially given that I recognize Sminthidae and Zapodidae as separate from Dipodidae. I’m motivated to keep them as separate because of their distinct ecologies, considerable morphological distinctions, and divergence times, which are consistent with family recognition in a number of other mammalian clades. However, in a similar case to genera, this is pretty subjective, as there is not a completely set upon definition of a family. I think the definition of families in the platyrrhines is different then what we’ve done for the catarrhines and it kind of bugs me, as we should be consistent at least within the same order. This is because the species diversity between these two clades are similar with similar crown group divergence times and morphological/ecological diversity, but we still call Cercopithecidae a single family and recognize 3-5 families of platyrrhines.

That makes sense and I'll switch to the three-family arrangement. My only worry is that most of the platyrrhine literature (or at least the papers I was reading yesterday) currently puts them in a single family. It'll be worth checking in every so often to see if it remains that way.

For the spelling, I think it comes down to what the oldest name for the group was, which is Callitrichidae Gray, 1821 (under I think as a subfamily name?) over Callithrichidae Thomas, 1903 (he might have spelt it Callitrhicidae). However, I don’t think name priority is completely based on age at the family level according to the code and I also don’t think it matters whether the name was first used as a subfamily, family, or tribe, it still can be moved between those levels and have the same authority (I’m not as well versed on family name usage, but if the name Callitrichinae was first used at the subfamily level, it still has priority over later names describing the same clade at the family and tribal level, but the ending just changes to -idae or -inae; I think the same goes for superfamily too). Callitrichidae/Callitrichinae is the most commonly used spelling at this point, so I’ve retained it to avoid confusion at this point. I’d like to hear more about your opinion with it though. I’m going to keep my spelling for now.

My understanding is that for family-group names the original spelling doesn't usually matter: the name is to be formed by adding a suffix to the stem (Art. 29.3), so even if the original author got the stem wrong, you should still use the correct stem. But I see now that Art. 29.5 says that if a form with incorrect stem is in prevailing usage, it is to be maintained. And clearly the Callitrich- forms are in prevailing usage, so I'll drop the h.

By the way, there's an additional complication here in that for much of the 19th century, Callithrix was misapplied to the titis, and the marmosets were called Hapale. Thomas (1903) fixed that and renamed the titis Callicebus. That's why, even though Gray (1821) introduced the name "Callitricidae", the family-group name for marmosets is correctly attributed to Thomas (1903), who used "Callitrichidae": Gray's name is technically based not on Callithrix Erxleben, 1777 (the marmosets), but on Callithrix Geoffroy, 1812 (a junior homonym that was applied to the titis). If you find that confusing, I don't blame you.

connorjburgin commented 1 year ago

Quick note on higher level taxa. I do plan on adding pages specifically for higher level taxa and their synonyms, but hadn't got there yet as we've focused mostly on species. So, in the future, we will be adding them and dealing with those intricacies a bit more.

I'm also going to continue not to recognize the Saguinus splits for the time being and add some comments on it to the MDD. I'm really looking forward to the publication of the third volume of the Mammals of South America to see how they decide to handle the taxonomy of neotropical primates, as I'm sure I'll be taking on whatever arrangement they choose in the long run.