Haemocera morii Tokioka, 1949

Grygier, Mark J. & Suárez-Morales, Eduardo, 2018, Recognition and partial solution of nomenclatural issues involving copepods of the family Monstrillidae (Crustacea: Copepoda: Monstrilloida), Zootaxa 4486 (4), pp. 497-509 : 502-503

Haemocera morii Tokioka, 1949 or Cymbasoma morii Sekiguchi, 1982 (reprised from Grygier 1994b)

Tokioka (1949) described Haemocera morii based on the female holotype. The descriptive text and illustrations were more detailed than the common run of monstrilloid descriptions to that time, but no diagnosis was provided, nor any explicit or implicit comparison to any other species. From this publication alone it is impossible to know which characters were “purported to differentiate the taxon” (Art. 13.1.1 of the Code). The word “purport” is not defined in the Code’s Glossary, but according to various dictionaries it carries the implication of an intentional or deliberate representation.

Some nomenclaturally irrelevant appearances of Haemocera morii in faunal lists followed its description, but then Sekiguchi (1982) transferred the species to Cymbasoma . He cited the earlier work, presented a short, illustrated description of a second female, and concluded his remarks with the following discriminative observation (p. 32), “This species is closely related with C. gracile (GURNEY, 1927) and C. recticulata [sic] (GIESBRECHT, 1892), but distinguished from the latters by setation of the 5th legs.” Grygier (1994b) reattributed the authorship of morii to Sekiguchi, 1982, citing the English version of Art. 13(a)(1) of the Third Edition of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN 1985), then in force, and writing (p. 23) concerning Tokioka’s (1949) paper that “no statement purported to distinguish this species from any other, so the new name was unavailable ….” Noting that Tokioka’s (1949) and Sekiguchi’s (1982) specimens are both syntypes if authorship of the species is attributed to Sekiguchi, Grygier (1994b) designated the extant Sekiguchi specimen as the lectotype.

Grygier (1995a) repeated this history in brief in his summaries of Tokioka’s (1949) and Sekiguchi’s (1982) papers and called Haemocera morii a nomen nudum. Razouls (1996) listed this nominal species both as Haemocera morii Tokioka, 1949 and as Cymbasoma morii Sekiguchi, 1982 , with a cross-reference from the former listing to the latter. Suárez-Morales & Escamilla (1997), Suárez-Morales & Palomares-García (1999), and many subsequent single- or multiple-author works by Suárez-Morales have accepted the authorship attribution of Cymbasoma morii to Sekiguchi, 1982 without comment.

No specific means of expressing the purported differentiation of a new taxon was mandated by the above-cited Article 13a(1) of the Third Edition (ICZN 1985). Recommendation 13A suggested “giving a summary of characters that in the author’s opinion differentiate the taxon from other named taxa of the same rank as the new taxon”, but the Article allowed the information to be conveyed in any way whatsoever. Descriptions that fail to differentiate in some way are probably quite rare, and it is frequently possible to regard a bare description also as a diagnosis. It would be beyond the bounds of reason, however, to assume that Tokioka (1949) regarded all of the mentioned features in his description as diagnostic at the species level. We also do not think it reasonable to parse Article 13(a)(i) of the Third Edition such that “description” and “definition that states in words …” are interpreted as two different alternatives. A straw poll conducted by MJG among current ICZN Commissioners found that most respondents agreed with the idea that the restrictive relative clause pertains to both “description” and “definition”.

Minor changes in the wording of Article 13.1.1, Recommendation 13A, and various Glossary entries in the Fourth Edition of the Code (ICZN 2009) did not affect the above reasoning. The Fourth Edition was issued initially in both English and French versions of equal standing and force. In the French text, the wordings of Article 13.1.1 and “diagnose” in the Glossary differ significantly in meaning from the respective English versions. The French version lacks an equivalent word for "purported" or “purports” in both places [also true of the official Japanese edition of the Code: International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature 2000], and thus apparently allows implicit differentiations as well as explicit ones; it may be sufficient to mention discriminative characters without pointing them out as such. In the case of Tokioka’s (1949) description of Haemocera morii , anyone familiar with the preceding monstrilloid literature would immediately recognize, as did Sekiguchi (1982), that there were only two remotely similar species (although Tokioka never mentioned them), and which features in the description were the taxonomically significant ones. Under the French text, Haemocera morii Tokioka, 1949 appears to be an available name, while, as noted above, under the English reading it appears to be unavailable.

In August of 2002, Grygier submitted an application to ICZN (Case 3252) to request a ruling to settle the matter in favor of the French (and Japanese) wording of Art. 13.1.1 and the French wording of the definition of the term “diagnose” in the Glossary. Under such a ruling Haemocera morii Tokioka, 1949 would be recognized as an available name and Grygier’s (1994b) lectotype designation for Cymbasoma morii would be set aside because Tokioka’s (1949) original specimen would be the holotype. Receipt of the Case was acknowledged in print [see Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 59(4): 233], but this Case was never published and it was closed in October, 2003, without any published notification of closure.

Under Article 87 of the Code, all ICZN-authorized editions of the Code in various languages “are official and are equivalent in force”. As a matter of fact, Art. 13.1. 1 in the German edition of the Fourth Code ( Krauss 2000) is yet again different, being concerned with features that are “geeignet” (i.e., “suitable” or “useful”) for distinguishing the new taxon. Authors from some linguistic backgrounds might be inclined to reverse Grygier’s (1994b) judgement concerning the authorship of Haemocera / Cymbasoma morii , which was based on the English version of the Code, and return the authorship to Tokioka (1949). However, we cannot choose among Codes unilaterally; apparent differences in meaning between official texts of the Code are to be referred to the Commission (Article 87 of the Code). This was done in Case 3252, but since the Case was closed without any ruling on the linguistic questions it raised, the authorship and the date of availability of the present species remain ambiguous.