property:basionymAuthorship

[nielsklazenga]

basionymAuthorship (property)

Label	Basionym Authorship
Definition	Authorship of the basionym
Usage notes	Note that the basionym is another name (Taxon Name) and that names cannot be their own basionym. The basionym authorship is always in parentheses in both botanical and zoological names.
Comments
Required	No
Repeatable	No
Constraints	Literal

Mapping

TCS 1	DataSet/TaxonNames/TaxonName/CanonicalAuthorship/BasionymAuthorship/Authors
TDWG Ontology	http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/TaxonName#basionymAuthorship

[nielsklazenga]

Just noting that a basionym is 'a previously published legitimate name-bringing or epithet-bringing synonym from which a new name is formed for a taxon of different rank or position', so basionym authorship is the authorship of a different name. A lot of names do not have a basionym, so making basionym authorship required – as it is in TCS 1 – will make the parsed authorship unusable. The term is also used incorrectly, for example in the Global Name Parser.

Making sure that the term is used correctly and no misleading data is provided will require extensive usage notes and I wonder what the benefit is of parsing name authorships to justify this effort, especially since all the other name authorship elements are problematic and often misinterpreted.

[mdoering]

I see 3 levels of atomisation for the authorship of a name:

1. the entire authorship as a single string
2. authorship part in brackets (basionym) and outside (combination)
3. each of the two authorship strings broken down into year, list of authors and ex-authors

Most use cases can do fine with just the single string. Others want it broken down. I personally think having just the entire authorship or otherwise a fully parsed one down to a list of individual authors covers pretty much all use cases. The middle step of splitting the authorship but not parsing out the year or individual authors seems less interesting.

Apart from the strict authorship you also find all kinds of extra information embedded in the "authorship" of a name such as nomenclatural remarks (e.g. nom. illeg.), taxonomic remarks (sensu lato), taxon concept references (sensu Miller) or misapplied names (non Miller), the original abbreviated publication (botany) to name the most important ones. But that is a different problem.

[deepreef]

@nielsklazenga : This is one of the reasons why I coined 'Protonym', as distinct from 'basionym'. Also, basionym apply only to names for infrageneric taxa (binominals, trinominals), whereas 'Protonym' applies to all ranks (including domain/kingdom/etc. Another reason for a separate term is that a Protonym refers to a specific TNU, whereas basionym describes the relationship between a subsequent combination and the corresponding original combination. Thus: all scientific names have a protonym, but only the subset of infrageneric names with subsequent combinations have a basionym.

[ghwhitbread]

@deepreef ... but this property cannot be protonymAuthorship! The only permitted value is the author string from the name-bringing objective synonym (the basionym) which will always be a TNU. In zoology this rarely seems to be of consequence but in botany the property can apply at any rank following a change in position (comb. nov.), a change in rank (stat. nov.), or both (comb. et stat. nov.). In botany the term ‘protonym’ has been used to reference an earlier, invalid though effectively published TNU that is never a “name”, it might be interesting but never of any consequence, even when the authors are cited in “exAuthorship”, or the nom. inval. TNU is cited in synonymy.

[nielsklazenga]

That is correct(-ish), but having 'original name authorship' would resolve the problem for authorships of zoological names, as that is how 'basionym authorship' is used at the moment (by code-unaware parsers, not to mention TCS 1). I think this is an area where the different Codes are likely to differ most, so we might need different solutions for different Codes, like ABCD has.

This, by the way, is how Hawksworth (2017) defines 'protonym':

protonym: an effectively but not validly published name, especially of one taken up and validly published at a later date; not generally used of devalidated names.

Pretty close to @ghwhitbread's description – which sounds onamatopoetically better to me too – I would say. This is covered (partly) by the basedOn (#96) property.

Thanks @mdoering for answering my question.

Happy New Year everybody.

[mdoering]

do we all agree basionymAuthorship or how it will be called only every captures the information in the authorship which is normally present in brackets? Regardless of which code the name belongs to? That is how both the GNA and GBIF name parsers work. originalNameAuthorshop sounds to me as if it would be present in original names. But in these cases there is no basionym and no author in brackets. It truely is the basionym authorship, only present if there is a basionym, not for original names / protonyms ala Rich.

[deepreef]

@ghwhitbread : I agree, and I didn't mean to suggest that we need or want anything like protonymAuthorship. I was just underscoring the problems with the concept of "basionym" when treated as a name, rather than as a relationship between one name and another name. In fact, the usages behind protonym and basionym are not always the same (whereas protonym is always the first chronoloogical usage of a name, basionym is generally taken as the Code-compliant birth of an original combination/protologue). As for the original use of "protonym" in the botanical (actually, mycological) context, I was strongly encouraged by Paul Kirk to ignore that definition. Apparently Hawksworth never got the memo... Alain Dubois also has yet another definition in zoology, that he proposed at about the same time (early 2000s).

I agree with @mdoering that basionymAuthorship probably represents the best compromise between familiarity/understandability and technical correctness. Also, originalNameAuthorship is imprecise as well. Even originalCombinationAuthorship is a bit ambiguous: if you really wanted to be explicit it would be something like originalCodeCompliantNameUsageAuthorship, or something similarly obnoxious.

[nielsklazenga]

I've got little to add to what @deepreef just said. basionymAuthorship is fine from a botanist's perspective, although it is often misused. I cannot speak from a zoologist's perspective like @deepreef can.

The real problem for me is with the other term combinationAuthorship (#83), as it is used with names that are not combinations and if the name is a combination its basionym is most likely a combination as well.

Just copying in what ABCD has for zoological names:

[deepreef]

So... I guess we have a more fundamental question to address. If we want something parsed (as opposed to a simple text-string "nameAuthorship" term), then is the basis of parsing related to how the text-string authorship is formatted when displayed to a human? Or would the parsing be for actual information parsing, where the bits have some informatic meaning beyond just formatting a text string? The ABCD approach seems very-much focused on test-string formatting. My inclination follows that of @mdoering 's earlier post:

I personally think having just the entire authorship or otherwise a fully parsed one down to a list of individual authors covers pretty much all use cases. The middle step of splitting the authorship but not parsing out the year or individual authors seems less interesting.

That is, I think there is value in having a single term to represent the fully formatted authorship string (unparsed), but less value in having semi-parsed bits either in the form of the ABCD "formatting" breakdown, or the basionym/combination "meaning" breakdown.

For the fully-parsed version (separate authors/date/etc.), I think it's a mistake to supply such fully parsed attributes to an instance of "name". Technically, I think the authorship is the "authorship of the protologue", not the authorship of the "name". I think it's smarter to interpret a protologue (and its associated authorship & date details) as an instance of Reference, not of TaxonomicName. Thus, I don't think it makes sense to assert terms for fully-parsed (or semi-parsed) authorship attributes as they apply to instances of TaxonomicName, rather than attributes of instances of Reference.

[nielsklazenga]

Yes, that is what we concluded when we talked about it in the TNC meeting of Dec. 4 2018 and hence my question whether we should even bother. I think authorship of a name is purely administration and, if there is any information in there it is lost on parsing. The authorship of the name is not necessarily the same as that of the protologue, but attribution of names is quite complicated and if there is a difference between the ascribed authorship and the publishing authorship the provided authorship is quite likely incorrect.

I agree that it is really the authorship of the reference that matters.

[nielsklazenga]

@mdoering , the GNA parser gives basionymAuthorship no matter whether the name has a basionym or not, https://parser.globalnames.org/?q=Dicranum+blumei+Nees%0D%0ADicranoloma+blumei+%28Nees%29+Paris. This is completely in line with TCS 1.

I think, however, that we all do indeed agree that basionymAuthorship is only ever the part of the authorship that is in parentheses.

[mdoering]

ouch, yes. I forgot that the GNA parser results differ from the GBIF one in that respect:
http://api.catalogueoflife.org/parser/name?name=Dicranum%20blumei%20Nees

I don't think TCS 1 follows the GNA model though. The CanonicalAuthorship has both the full string in Simple and then a parsed version which breaks it down either to just Authorship OR BasionymAuthorship and an optional CombinationAuthorship. I read this as use the later only if there is a bracket authorship, but not for original names. So TCS has actually 3 terms:

	<xs:complexType name="CanonicalAuthorship">
		<xs:sequence>
			<xs:element name="Simple" type="xs:string">
				<xs:annotation>
					<xs:documentation>The full code-appropriate author team string for this name at this rank. If author is not known, enter the literal "-" (element is not optional!). Examples: 'L.'; '(L.) Smith &amp; Jones ex Brown, Green &amp; Black'. Where atomized citation data exist, this text should be derived from them.</xs:documentation>
				</xs:annotation>
			</xs:element>
			<xs:choice minOccurs="0">
				<xs:element name="Authorship" type="NameCitation"/>
				<xs:sequence>
					<xs:element name="BasionymAuthorship" type="NameCitation">
						<xs:annotation>
							<xs:documentation> This represents the authors of the basionym. It is usually displayed in brackets. </xs:documentation>
						</xs:annotation>
					</xs:element>
					<xs:element name="CombinationAuthorship" type="NameCitation" minOccurs="0">
						<xs:annotation>
							<xs:documentation> This represents the authors of the new combination of this name. The authors who come after the brackets in the traditional way of citing botanical names. These authors are not usually cited in zoology though the ICZN recommends that they should be included (Art.51G). </xs:documentation>
						</xs:annotation>
					</xs:element>
				</xs:sequence>
			</xs:choice>
		</xs:sequence>
	</xs:complexType>

The TCS user guide has an example for Gossypium tomentosum Nutt. ex Seem. on page 14 which breaks down the authorship not using BasionymAuthorship:

<TaxonName id="123" nomenclaturalCode="Botanical">
    <Simple>Gossypium tomentosum Nutt. ex Seem.</Simple>
    <CanonicalAuthorship>
        <Simple>Nutt. ex Seem.</Simple>
        <Authorship>
            <Simple>Nutt. ex Seem.</Simple>
            <Authors>
                <AgentName role=”ex”>Nuttall</AgentName>
                <AgentName>Seem</AgentName>
            </Authors>
        </Authorship>
    </CanonicalAuthorship>
    <BasedOn>
        <RelatedName ref="124"/>
    </BasedOn>
</TaxonName>
<TaxonName id="124" nomenclaturalCode="Botanical">
    <Simple>Gossypium tomentosum Nutt.</Simple>
</TaxonName>

The GBIF & COL parser and API yet have a slightly different approach using BasionymAuthorship & CombinationAuthorship only and place the original authorship also in CombinationAuthorship. Basically the authorship of this exact combination in the sense of bi/trinomial, not _re_combination. Both the TCS 1 and GBIF option work for me and I agree this is rather a problem for the definition of CombinationAuthorship than BasionymAuthorship (which should always be the bracket authorship).

[deepreef]

@nielsklazenga :

The authorship of the name is not necessarily the same as that of the protologue

Can you give examples of this? I agree that the authorship of the protologue for a name is often different from the authorship of the published work that contains the protologue (e.g., "Smith in Jones"); but it's always been my understanding that, essentially by definition, the authorship of the name is always the authorship of the protologue. If there are botanical examples where this is not the case, I would very-much like to understand them.

if there is a difference between the ascribed authorship and the publishing authorship the provided authorship is quite likely incorrect.

By "ascribed" authorship, do you mean authorship that accompanies names when provided from various name sources? Or is there some sort of recognized distinction (in botany?) between an "ascribed" authorship and a "publishing" authorship? If the former, then yes, of course, people make mistakes all the time when assigning authorships to names -- in which case I assume you mean that the "publishing authorship" is synonymous with the "correct authorship" (and when different, the "ascribed authorship" is the "incorrect authorship"). But if there is some deeper informatic meaning to "ascribed authorship" that I am not aware of, perhaps this represents something behind the idea that the correct authorship of the protologue may not be the same as the correct authorship of the name?

[ghwhitbread]

@deepreef - @mdoering example above ...
In Flora Vitiensis, Seemann published “Gossypium tomentosum Nutt.” , ascribing it to Nuttall. Authorship = “Nutt. ex Seem.” is used to document this ascription, but “Gossypium tomentosum Seem.” would be equally correct. If Nuttall had in fact published the name “in” Seemann’s work then the authorship would just be “Nutt.”

[nielsklazenga]

There are a lot of examples in https://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/pages/main/art_46.html.

It depends, of course, how you circumscribe 'protologue'. However, the author the name will be eventually attributed to does not have to have written the entire validating description, but there has to be some sort of indication that they have contributed to the description. There are lots of examples of new names that are published in articles that are read to Linnean or Royal Societies where the author of the name is different from the person who reads to the Society and becomes the author of the paper and it is impossible to tell who did what. This is not a simple matter of granularity.

[deepreef]

@ghwhitbread : Thanks for clarifying that "ascribe" applies to "ex" authorships. So, in your example, wouldn't you also regard the authorship of the protologue to be "Nutt. ex. Seem."? Are there specific rules in the Code that essentially say "the authorship of the name is different from the authorship of the protologue"? The rules in zoology are essentially the same in such "ascribed" cases (if that it what is meant by "ascribed") -- the only difference being that we would reverse the sequence of authors around the "ex" (i.e., it would be "Seem. ex. Nutt."). We don't define "protologue" in the zoological Code, but my understanding of the meaning of that term in the botanical sense is that it is the collective set of required information necessary to establish a name in the sense of the Code. In this context, the authorship of the protologue may be different from the authorship of the publication containing the protologue, but I was unaware that the authorship of the name could be different from the authorship of the protologue.

@nielsklazenga : I didn't see any indication in the link you provided for how to determine the authorship of the protologue (that word appears only three times in the linked page, none of which address how to treat the authorship of the protologue).

I see three potential authorships:

1. Authorship of the publication
2. Authorship of the protologue
3. Authorship of the name

We all agree that 1 and 3 can be different. What I'm not clear on is whether 2 and 3 can be different from each other. If, in botany, they can be different, does that mean there may be potentially three different sets of authors? If so, when the authorship of the protologue differs from both the authorship of the containing publication and the authorship of the name, how is the authorship of the protologue defined? If there is no clear definition, then isn't it logical to assume that the authorship of the name effectively represents the authorship of the protologue (with or without "ex" authors)?

[nielsklazenga]

@deepreef I have responded to your question in tdwg/tnc#85.

[deepreef]

Thanks, @nielsklazenga : and yes, that's exactly my point. However one defines "protologue", it (and its authors) are an instance of Reference (publication), not "Name" (or TNU). Thus, I prefer an approach that treats a protologue as a "microreference" (granular publication instance), and assign fully parsed authorship (and date) to that instance, from which the complete/canonical name authorship can be constructed according to a defined template.

In that context, I would prefer to have a single, unparsed "nameAuthorship" term associated with a name instance, and not worry about defining some number of semi-parsed authorship terms.

[nielsklazenga]

@mdoering, thanks, you are right, I have overlooked that all this time.

Still means we need an equivalent for //CanonicalAuthorship/Authorship.

[nielsklazenga]

@deepreef , yes, fully agree on both counts.

Just noting that we already have the unparsed name authorship (#82).

[nielsklazenga]

Merging with #239.