Lisposoma josehermana Lamoral 1979 (Bothriuridae)

Acosta, Luis E. & Fet, Victor, 2005, Nomenclatural notes in Scorpiones (Arachnida), Zootaxa 934 (1), pp. 1-12 : 4

Lisposoma josehermana Lamoral 1979 (Bothriuridae)

Lisposoma josehermana Lamoral 1979: 665 ; Fet, Soleglad & Kovařík 2004: 196.

Lisposoma joseehermanorum Lowe & Fet 2000: 34 ; Prendini 2003: 257. Unjustified emendation (junior objective synonym).

This species name was based on the first names of Lamoral's parents: Marie­Josée and Herman. Lowe & Fet (2000) emended the spelling, both to restore a missing 'e' of the mother's name, and to provide a 'proper' genitive plural ending. Concerning the genitive, the two names cannot be reunited under the collective ending ­ orum, because of referring to different persons; this would be only allowed if the species were dedicated, for example, to 'Mr and Mrs Lamoral' (i.e., 'lamoralorum'). More importantly, it is not clear that Lamoral (1979) intended to use genitive for his species — in fact it seems he did not. The genitive case is only one of four ways to dedicate a species name to persons (Art. 31.1.). The 3rd edition of the Code (1985) includes an Appendix D III, p. 195 (unfortunately not currently included in the 4th edition), showing examples of dedications not ending with the 'classical' genitive suffixes. Lamoral (1979) might have constructed the name as a Latin adjective, by adding the ending 'a' as, for example, in 'linnaeana', 'kurtziana', etc. One may argue that to do it properly he should have used the ending ­iana, and not just an 'a', but incorrect latinizations are not to be considered 'inadvertent errors' (Art. 32.5.1.). Lamoral's mother's name was 'Marie­Josée', so it appears he also deliberately simplified the name (by not including Marie and deleting one 'e' from Josée). The best solution is to consider 'josehermana' as an arbitrary construct, and as such, an indeclinable word (i.e., no need to agree in gender with Lisposoma¸ neuter). In other words, the original spelling should be retained, as used again by Fet, Soleglad & Kovařík (2004).