scientificNameAuthorships for autonyms

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A question from Amber Saundry at UBC:
For the DwC term scientificNameAuthorship – this should be the authorship of 
the lowest rank.  However, what about when there is an subspecies/variety/forma 
autonym (ie: Salix brachycarpa Nutt. subsp. brachycarpa)?  Should this field 
reflect the species authorship (Nutt.), or be blank, as the subspecies level 
has no authorship?

What would you suggest? 
http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#scientificNameAuthorship

Original issue reported on code.google.com by peter.de...@gmail.com on 9 Feb 2012 at 12:02

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Amber

Your query touches upon the Code of nomenclature, which is awkward in its
implementation in a database.

When you have a non-autonymic infraspecies, you only need to provide the
authority for the lower rank in the combination. But this is not what the
Code does for autonyms, the reason being that autonyms are automatically
created by the description of a new infraspecies within a species. The
authority, therefore, is provided only with the species, as you do.

This being said, such an approach cannot be implemented when you have a
single authority field, with the lowest rank. There are two solutions: leave
the field blank or populate the field with the species authority.

The former has the advantage to provide a name that follows the Code, but at
the same time does not provide the user with the authority. What if you have
homonyms in a genus (as, for instance, in Salix cordata): lack of an
authority could engander taxonomic error.

Therefore, it appears better to me to populate the field with the author of
the species, even though this is not what the Code does (but at the same
time, I have not seen that it is expressly forbidden).

This is my opinion. I wish the Code would adapt to databases...

Luc

Original comment by luc.brou...@umontreal.ca on 9 Feb 2012 at 4:39

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I asked Kanchi Gandhi here at HUH.  The email exchange is below.

My interpretation of his response is that the value of scientificNameAuthority 
should be blank for subspecies/infraspecific autonyms.

======================================

Paul,

You cited correctly: Salix brachycarpa Nutt. subsp. brachycarpa

This does imply that Nuttall is the author of the autonym

But, according to the Code, authorship must NOT be cited for the autonym.

Autonyms exist only for a classification.  Autonym is NOT a name.
Therefore, it does not have an author.

We do not record autonyms.

May be this should be changed in the next Code (2017) to cite authorship for
an autonym.

Kanchi

On 2/9/12 11:29 AM, "Paul J. Morris" wrote:
> Kanchi,
> 
> A nomenclatural issue has come up in the development of the AppleCore guidance
> for how to use DarwinCore concepts in Herbaria.
> 
> In essence, I read the issue as: Who is the author of an autonymic subspecies
> name? e.g. Who is the author of Salix brachycarpa brachycarpa?
> 
> Secondly, can the authorship of the subspecies Salix brachycarpa brachycarpa
> be thought of as separable from its position in the name, that is, does the
> construction "Salix brachycarpa Nutt. subsp. brachycarpa" tell us that Nuttall
> was the author of the autonym subspecies brachycarpa?
> 
> -Paul

Original comment by mole@morris.net on 9 Feb 2012 at 5:04

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Fine. But the issue I raised is valid: the Code does not consider this.

Luc

Original comment by luc.brou...@umontreal.ca on 9 Feb 2012 at 5:07

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This is indeed an issue. The Mellon GPI project requires that the infraspecific 
author field be populated, and in the case of autonyms it appears that data 
providers are populating this field with the specific epithet author...

Original comment by sweeneyp...@gmail.com on 9 Feb 2012 at 5:25

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Luc, 

Absolutely.  

Thinking it through further, there is a rationale behind my suggestion to use 
blank.  I'll phrase it as a question: Is the purpose of AppleCore to provide 
guidance to producers or consumers of TDWG DarwinCore documents?  

Specifying that producers of DarwinCore data should set the 
scienificNameAuthorship to an empty string when the taxon is a autonymn lets 
consumers make the zoologically reasonable assumption that they can simply 
concatenate "<em>genus specificEpithet</em> taxonRank 
<em>infraspecificEpithet</em> scientificNameAuthorship" to produce a reasonably 
correct display of the taxon name.  

Specifying that producers of DarwinCore data should set the 
scienificNameAuthorship to a the name of the author of the species when the 
taxon is a autonymn forces us to give normative guidance to consumers on the 
logic they need to use in order to produce a reasonably correct display of the 
taxon name, and that without implementing such logic, they will incorrectly 
assert that the name is Salix brachycarpa Nutt. subsp. brachycarpa Nutt.

We could also approach the problem semantically.  Kanchi asserts: "Autonym is 
NOT a name. Therefore, it does not have an author."   This implies to me that 
the scientificNameAuthorship of Salix brachycarpa Nutt. subsp. brachycarpa is 
null as this is an Autonym and has no author. 

However, there is another way to look at it:  The TDWG DarwinCore defines 
scientificNameAuthorship as: "The authorship information for the scientificName 
formatted according to the conventions of the applicable nomenclaturalCode" and 
then defines scientificName as "The full scientific name, with authorship and 
date information if known. ..."  The value of scientificName should be "Salix 
brachycarpa Nutt. subsp. brachycarpa", and this does contain authorship 
information ("Nutt."), formatted according to the conventions of the applicable 
code.  This still leaves a burden of knowing what to do on the consumers of the 
data.

Original comment by mole@morris.net on 9 Feb 2012 at 5:41

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Regarding GPI, our HUH BatchBuilder code is not providing the infraspecific 
authorship to GPI, in conformance with the LAPI schema which allows the 
InfraSpecificAuthor element to be blank.  The relevant snippet of code is:

                    if (rankid > SPECIESRANKID) {
                        // This is an infraspecific name
                        // Species values got filled in from species query above, now populate the infra fields.
                        anId.setInfraSpecificEpithet(trivialepithet);
                        anId.setInfraSpecificRank(trivialrank);
                        //Handle case of Autonyms where trivial author is blank.
                        boolean isAutonym = false;
                        if (trivialauthor == null) {
                            //Check to see if this is an autonym (Aus bus bus)
                            String sql_autonym = " select t.name as child, p.name as parent, p.author from taxon t left join taxon p on t.parentid = p.taxonid where t.name = p.name and t.nodenumber = " + nodenumber ;
                            log.debug(sql_autonym);
                            Statement st_autonym = conn.createStatement();
                            ResultSet rs_autonym = st_autonym.executeQuery(sql_autonym);
                            loopcount = 0;
                            String sp_author = "";
                            while (rs_autonym.next()) {
                                String child = rs_autonym.getString("child");
                                String parent = rs_autonym.getString("parent");
                                if (child.equals(parent)) {
                                    isAutonym = true;
                                    sp_author = rs_autonym.getString("author");
                                }
                                loopcount++;
                                // should only be one row
                            }
                            if (isAutonym) {
                                anId.setAuthor(sp_author);
                            }
                            rs_autonym.close();
                            st_autonym.close();
                        } else {
                            anId.setInfraSpecificAuthor(trivialauthor);
                        }
                    }

Original comment by mole@morris.net on 9 Feb 2012 at 6:05

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Paul,

Thanks. Interesting to know. We sent a 'test' batch of our mapped data to GPI 
(to Santiago @ MO) and if I'm not mistaken, we were told that we must populate 
the infraspecific epithet field - even in the case of autonyms. If you do a 
search by 'var.' in the JSTOR Plants database, many folks are in the case of 
autonyms, providing the species author as the infraspecific epithet author. 
Something for me to follow-up on before we submit our first batch of records.

-Patrick

Original comment by sweeneyp...@gmail.com on 9 Feb 2012 at 6:15

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As I said, people working with the Code are not aware of the specific issues
of databases.

Luc

Original comment by luc.brou...@umontreal.ca on 9 Feb 2012 at 6:17

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Paul, I like the semantical, code-correct and consumer-friendly approach you're 
suggesting: an autonym is not a name, does not have an author, thus the 
scientificNameAuthorship field should be left blank for autonyms. I think we 
can suggest this in AppleCore.

Now, how easy it is to implement this will depend on the DB structure and the 
data entry policy:
1) genus species speciesAuthor subspecies subspeciesAuthor -> if subspecies not 
empty, use subspeciesAuthor
1.1) will be blank for autonyms if that is the policy used in the DB
1.2) will be filled in for autonyms if that is the policy used in the DB

2) genus species subspecies author -> use author
2.1) will be blank for autonyms if that is the policy used in the DB
2.2) will be filled in for autonyms if that is the policy used in the DB

Amber is in situation 1.1 or 1.2 (I don't know the policy)
For MT, we use 2.1
For VASCAN, we use 2.2, because we want to show the names with the 
speciesAuthor on our webpages: http://data.canadensys.net/vascan/taxon/9063 but 
this means it also ends up with the author in our DwC-As.

Regarding the scientificName: yes, according to DwC this should contain the 
authors, but there has been discussion around this (suggesting a canonical 
name). We're using it without authors, because it is more practical for the 
consumers and often for the producers as well.

Original comment by peter.de...@gmail.com on 9 Feb 2012 at 6:19