Response to the Point of View of Gregory B. Pauly, David M
Herpetologica, 65(2), 2009, 136–153 E 2009 by The Herpetologists’ League, Inc. RESPONSE TO THE POINT OF VIEW OF GREGORY B. PAULY, DAVID M. HILLIS, AND DAVID C. CANNATELLA, BY THE ANURAN SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE SSAR/HL/ASIH SCIENTIFIC AND STANDARD ENGLISH NAMES LIST 1,4 2 3 DARREL R. FROST ,ROY W. MCDIARMID , AND JOSEPH R. MENDELSON, III 1Division of Vertebrate Zoology (Herpetology), American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, NY 10024, USA 2US Geological Survey, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, National Museum of Natural History, MRC 111, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, DC 20013-7012, USA 3Zoo Atlanta, 800 Cherokee Avenue Southeast, Atlanta, GA 30315, USA ‘‘Stultum facit Fortuna quem vult perdere’’—Publilius Syrus, Maxim 911 ABSTRACT: The Point of View by Gregory Pauly, David Hillis, and David Cannatella misrepresents the motives and activities of the anuran subcommittee of the Scientific and Standard English Names Committee, contains a number of misleading statements, omits evidence and references to critical literature that have already rejected or superseded their positions, and cloaks the limitations of their nomenclatural approach in ambiguous language. Their Point of View is not about promoting transparency in the process of constructing the English Names list, assuring that its taxonomy is adequately reviewed, or promoting nomenclatural stability in any global sense. Rather, their Point of View focuses in large part on a single publication, The Amphibian Tree of Life, which is formally unrelated to the Standard English Names List, and promotes an approach to nomenclature mistakenly asserted by them to be compatible with both the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and one of its competitors, the PhyloCode.
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