Ophidium mastacembelus, Scopoli, 1777

Kottelat, Maurice, 2022, Mastacembelus simack, the valid name of the Mesopotamian spiny eel (Teleostei: Mastacembelidae), Zootaxa 5162 (4), pp. 446-450 : 446-448

Ophidium mastacembelus

A second edition of A. Russell (1756) was published in 1794 and includes the original description of Ophidium mastacembelus . The text of the 1756 book was revised and significantly enlarged by his half-brother, Patrick Russell (1727–1805). This work is listed here as Russell & Russell (1794). As explained in P. Russell’s preface to the 1794 (p. iii) edition, A. Russell started writing the book while physician in Aleppo (1742–1753) and intended to complete it after his return to England. Circumstances made this difficult and, by lack of time, he decided to hasten publication of a kind of abridged version, which he himself described as imperfect. He then continued to work on a more thorough, improved, second edition. The work was not finished at his death in 1768. His brother Patrick succeeded him as physician in Aleppo (1753–1771) and sent Alexander various material (information and possibly specimens). In 1771, on Patrick’s return from Aleppo, he found Alexander’s incomplete work and decided to finish it. The extent of the text left behind by Alexander is not known, and thus the extent of Patrick’s additions is not clear (see also Anonymous, 1810).

In the preface, Patrick (p. vii) mentions that the catalogue of plants had been much improved, with the help of Banks and Solander (p. viii), but that other groups, particularly reptiles and insects, remain almost in the same state as in the original version. Fishes were not mentioned in the preface. In the case of the description of O. mastacembelus , part of the description in the 1794 edition had already been in the description of 1756, but additional text detailing several characters was added. It is not possible to know if the additional text was extracted from Alexander’s unpublished documents, or reflects Patrick’s own work on the specimens, or other’s work. Patrick Russell’s name is not unknown in biological literature; he later published on Indian fauna, especially fishes (1803a,b) and is most famous for his herpetological work (Russell, 1796–1810; Adler, 2015; Das, 2015); he was probably able to do this work by himself. Gronovius’s (1763) description is mentioned, but some of the characters in the 1794 description are not mentioned by Gronovius (e.g. the number of fin rays). Besides, the numbers of dorsal, anal and pectoral-fin rays given in the text (p. 208) do not agree with those in Banks and Solander’s Latin paragraphs on next page, thus it seems unlikely that they contributed to this description.

Patrick Russell explained at the end of his own description (volume 2, p. 209) «My brother having deposited two specimens of this fish in the British Museum, Sir Joseph Banks and Dr. Solander after examining them and another specimen in my own possession, determined it to be an ophidium under the following description.

« Ophidium Mastacembelus . Maxillis imberbibus, superiore longiore acuminata: Cauda rotundata. B 6. D 34/114 P 29. A 2/80 C 19.

«Pinna Caudalis licet dorsali & anali unita facile distinguitur radiis Longioribus.»

Similar short (2-3 lines) Latin diagnoses by Solander are given for several fish species, see, e.g., p. 210 ( Silurus pelusius ), 211 ( Silurus cous ), 218 ( Silurus anguillaris ).

Finally, P. Russell also commented that «Mr. Home obligingly examined [the rostrum], and favoured me with following remarks», followed by a description of the snout and proboscis.

A German translation of Russell & Russell (1794) by Johann Friedrich Gmelin was published in 1797–1798. In this translation (1798: 99–102), the Latin diagnosis is given as « Mastacembalus [sic!]. Ophidium maxillis imberbibus; etc.» The caption of the unnumbered plate opposite p. 99 reads « Ophidium Mastacembelus ». The zoology part also exists as a separate (P. Russell, 1798).

Types. Ophidium mastacembelus is based on a series of syntypes consisting of all specimens available to Russell (1756) of which one has been figured; one of them had been given to Gonovius and figured, and two were present in the British Museum around 1794 and examined by Banks and Solander.

The type series also includes an additional specimen available to P. Russell (1794) and used as model of Plate IV. Patrick Russell (p. 209) explained that he replaced the figure in the first edition (A. Russell, 1756: pl. 12 fig. 2) by the figure «from a specimen lately received from Aleppo. (1792)». On page 208, he mentioned that «the fish described measured eleven inches, but they are sometimes considerably larger, as will appear from the drawing (Plate VI.) which is of the natural size of one of the largest».

The mention of 11 inches in both the 1756 and 1794 editions, could suggest that the text had been left unmodified from Alexander’s notes. There is no way to know whether the additional figured fish is the same as examined by Banks and Solander or Home. The text on p. 208 is somewhat ambiguous and P. Russell might have had more specimens.

Patrick Russell mentioned that the rostrum of O. mastacembelus had been examined by Mr Home. This refers to surgeon Everard Home (1756–1832), author of appendices on anatomy of cobra in Russell (1796). This specimen is possibly the specimen figured in dorsal view in Russell & Russell (1794: plate V). Home was brother-in-law of renowned anatomist John Hunter (1728–1793), who maintained a museum of anatomical material. I have not tried to track the possible presence of this specimen in the Hunterian Museum in London.

Three of the syntypes of O. mastacembelus are BMNH 1955.6.25.4-6 ( Günther, 1861: 541; Wheeler, 1956: 92) and they are probably the three specimens examined by Banks and Solander. The third one may or may not be the fish figured on Plate V and possibly the fish examined by Home.

The types series of O. mastacembelus includes all syntypes of O. simak and thus O. mastacembelus is almost an objective junior synonym of O. simack . But the type series of O. mastacembelus includes at least one specimen that was not available to A. Russell (1756). I designate here the specimen model of plate 12 figure 2 in A. Russell (1756) as lectotype of both O. simack and O. mastacembelus . This makes the two names objective synonyms.

Authorship of the name. The authorship of O. mastacembus is potentially contentious. The authors have been listed as «Banks & Solander, in Russell» (e.g. Sherborn, 1902: 594; Jouladeh-Roudbar, 2020: 249) or «Solander, in Russell» (e.g. Sufi, 1956: 111). While Banks and Solander wrote the 4-line Latin diagnosis that includes the name O. mastacembelus , it is positioned in the middle of the long and much more descriptive account written by A. Russell and complemented by P. Russell, and it is not self-evident why Solander, or Banks and Solander, would alone be responsible for the availability of the name. The name is also used on the caption of Plate V, which was compiled under the sole responsibility of P. Russell and which, alone, would also have satisfied the criteria of availability of the name O. mastacembelus .

The international Code of Zoological Nomenclature (hereunder Code), art. 50.1, defines the author of a name as «the person who first publishes it [Arts. 8, 11] in a way that satisfies the criteria of availability [...]». Banks and Solander did not even coin the word; it was already used by Gronovius (1763: 132). Anyway, even if Banks and Solander had created the word they are not responsible for satisfying the criteria of availability, they did not publish it. The Glossary of the Code (p. 114) defines ‘to publish’ as «to make public in a work, conforming to (2) above, any name [...]» [with (2) being «a work that conforms to Article 8»]. The person responsible for the conditions that made the name available is P. Russell who compiled and published the descriptive account and figure, and authorship is thus «P. Russell, in A. Russell & P. Russell» or maybe «Russell & Russell». I expect that some may find this contentious and argue that «P. Russell, Banks & Solander, in Russell & Russell» or «Russell, Russell, Banks & Solander, in Russell & Russell» or «Russell, Russell, Banks, Solander & Home, in Russell & Russell» would be defendable.

But ... is this really worth a discussion? Authorship of a name is only relevant as a bibliographic tool (see, e.g., Ng, 1994; Dubois, 2008; Kottelat, 2015), and the only bibliography-relevant information here is that the new name is made available by the description on pp. 208 and 209 and plate V of Russell & Russel (1794). ‘Secondary authors’ is probably a concept better abandoned because sometimes misleading (when users mention only the secondary authors but not the bibliographically important primary authors) and often not serving nomenclature.

[The authorship of the name might have some relevance in defining the type series, and create more problems. If Banks and Solander were retained as sole authors, this would restrict the type series to the three specimens they examined, and exclude the remaining specimens of A. Russell (1756) and Gronovius (1763). Would the caption « O. mastacembelus » on plate V, for which P. Russell is responsible, make this specimen a syntype?]