Tutorial 44: how to avoid using a preoccupied name for your new genus

The world is full of wonderful animals, both extant and extinct, and they all have names. As a result, it’s fairly common for newly named animals to be given names already in use — as for example with the giant Miocene sperm whale “Leviathan“ (now Livyatan). BUt there are ways to avoid walking into this problem, and in a helpful post on the Dinosaur Mailing Group, Ben Creisler recently posted a summary. I’m reproducing it here, with his permission, for posterity.

The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology website recently posted an article that describes a new taxon. Unfortunately, the new generic name was preoccupied and I contacted the lead author. As a reminder, there are a number of ways that authors, reviewers, and editors can check online if a proposed new name has been used before in zoological literature. Even if a generic name is not in current use (it’s a junior synonym), it still counts for zoological nomenclature if it was published in a way that makes it an available name according to ICZN requirements.

A good first place to check a name is: Index to Organism Names (ION). This database is kept up-to-date with the Zoological Record. Queries can be exact letter-for-letter or end in * to bring up partial matches after the first letters. The * query feature will not work at the beginning of a name, however. So cerat* works as a query but not *ceratops.

The queries will bring up a name or the first part of a name (when a * is used) that has been used for a species and for a genus (which may require scrolling through the names because of species matches).

If a queried name does not show up as a generic name in the ION, it is not a guarantee that a name has not been used before, and a good policy would be to double-check a number of other online resources.

The Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera (IRMNG) has the advantage of being limited to generic names, but is not exhaustive. Still worth checking.

GBIF | Global Biodiversity Information Facility

Tree of Life

The recent problem with the preoccupied dinosaur name Jingia (replaced with Jingiella) highlights some of the content issues with each of these databases. Jingia Chen, 1983 (a moth) shows up in the GBIF and the Tree of Life, but not in the ION or the IRMNG. It’s a good idea to check all of them.

Note that I will happily check new names for people for preoccupied status or for questions on meaning or formation.

… And in a followup comment, Tyler Greenfield also recommended the Nomenclator Zoologicus and Index Animalium as great resources for checking historical names.

So now you know! No more excuses: check your new names for preoccupation.