International Dragonfly Fund - Report Journal of the International Dragonfly Fund ISSN 1435-3393 Content Hämäläinen, Matti Catalogue of individuals commemorated in the scientific names of extant dragonflies, including lists of all available eponymous species-group and genus-group names 1-168 Volume 80 2015 The International Dragonfly Fund (IDF) is a scientific society founded in 1996 for the improvement of odonatological knowledge and the protection of species. Internet: http://www.dragonflyfund.org/ This series intends to publish studies promoted by IDF and to facilitate cost-efficient and rapid dis- semination of odonatological data. Editorial Work: Martin Schorr, Milen Marinov, Rory Dow Layout: Martin Schorr Indexed by Zoological Record, Thomson Reuters, UK Home page of IDF: Holger Hunger Printing: ikt Trier, Germany Impressum: International Dragonfly Fund - Report - Volume 80 Date of publication: 14.03.2015 Publisher: International Dragonfly Fund e.V., Schulstr. 7B, 54314 Zerf, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] Responsible editor: Martin Schorr International Dragonfly Fund - Report 80 (2015): 1-168 1 Catalogue of individuals commemorated in the scientific names of extant dragonflies, including lists of all available eponymous species-group and genus-group names Matti Hämäläinen Naturalis Biodiversity Center, P.O. Box 9517, 2300 RA Leiden, the Netherlands Email: [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract A catalogue of 1257 persons commemorated in the scientific names of extant dragonflies (Odonata) is presented together with brief personal information on each entry, typi- cally the full name and year of birth and death (in case of a deceased person). Each individual has a list of the available species, subspecies, genus or subgenus names erected in his or her honour. A total of 1928 available eponymous species-group and 54 genus-group names are listed. These figures include also synonyms and homo- nyms. It was calculated that of the ca 8400 available species-group names in extant Odonata, ca 23 % are eponyms. Of the 933 new species-group names introduced from 1 January 1995 to 10 March 2015, as many as 42.9 % are eponyms. Introduction Taxonomists, both zoologists and botanists, often name new species after the collector of the type material or after their colleagues, collaborators, family members or friends. In formal biological nomenclature, this practice was begun by Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), father of the binomial system of nomenclature, although only a small number of his names were dedicated to individuals. Scientific or common names honouring indi- vidual persons are generally called eponyms, (one of several meanings of the term). Casual browsing of any dragonfly catalogue, worldwide or regional, shows that many dra- gonfly names are eponyms. Various regional handbooks and field guides of dragonflies provide information on etymologies, including eponyms, of names of each genus and species in the area, the earliest perhaps being Williamson’s (1900) ‘The dragonflies of Indiana’. There are also several dedicated publications on Odonata etymologies, for in- stance Fliedner (1997, 1998) for Europe, Paulson & Dunkle (2012) for North America and Endersby (2012a) for Australia. Similar publications on etymologies of dragonfly names for individual authors are also available (e.g. Fliedner 2006, Endersby 2012b, c, Hämä- läinen 2013). However, until now no attempt has been made to identify and catalogue the eponyms to be found in the names of Odonata worldwide. 2 Eponym catalogue of Odonata Recently, a project was undertaken by Bo Beolens and his son Ashley Beolens to compile an eponym dictionary of the Odonata. This work aims to provide biographies of all per- sons whose names have been used as eponyms in the order in the style of the previ- ously published eponym dictionaries on other groups such as birds (Beolens & Watkins 2003; Beolens & al. 2014), mammals (Beolens & al. 2009) reptiles (Beolens & al., 2011) and amphibians (Beolens & al. 2013). Largely motivated by this plan, and given my own longstanding interest in this subject, I have prepared the following catalogue in a spirit of cooperation. I hope that it will serve as a useful reference, facilitating more detailed biographic accounts of the individuals listed, as planned by Bo Beolens, as well as com- plementing that publication when it appears. Whereas the present catalogue aims to document only eponyms based on a real person (or family or couple) born after 1400 AD, the coming eponym dictionary will have a broader scope and include also names based on mythological, fictional, religious and historical characters, people groups and names which resemble eponyms, but actually refer to locality, structural character or have no clear meaning. It soon became clear that to be fully successful this project would need to be based on a fully complete and up-dated synonymic catalogue of the Odonata of the world. Unfor- tunately no such catalogue was available when I began this project (April 2013) and even now (December 2014), at the time of writing, none of the numerous global checklists of Odonata available on internet is complete and/or fully up-dated, especially as regards to the available synonymic names. At present the only fully complete and readily acces- sible synonymic check-list list of an area larger than a single continent, is ‘A synonymic list of the New World Odonata’ by Rosser W. Garrison and Natalia von Ellenrieder, which can be downloaded at: [ http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/PPD/entomology/odonata.html ]. Therefore the first step was to try to compile a working checklist of the extant world odonates. Bridges’ catalogue of the names of world Odonata (Bridges 1994) provided nearly complete coverage of the available names introduced up to mid-1994. For ‘post-Bridges’ names and for later changes in the taxonomic status of ‘Old World’ taxa, numerous publications were consulted. Of these the following five sources proved most useful: Jan van Tol’s World Odonata database [ http://www.odonata.info/ ], the Odonata part of Encyclopedia of Life [ http://eol.org/pages/952/overview ], the World Odonata List by Martin Schorr and Dennis Paulson [ http://www.pugetsound.edu/academ- ics/academic-resources/slater-museum/biodiversity-resources/dragonflies/world- odonata-list2/ ], the checklist of African Odonata by K.D. Dijkstra [ http://www.africa- dragonfly.net/globalResults.php?Format=SL_HTML ] and the book on dragonflies of East- ern Africa by Dijkstra & Clausnitzer (2014). According to my calculations as at 10 March 2015 approximately 8400 available species- group and ca 1030 genus-group names have been given to the extant members of the Order Odonata. These figures cover all generic, subgeneric, specific and subspecific International Dragonfly Fund - Report 80 (2015): 1-168 3 names, including synonyms and homonyms, but do not include infrasubspecific names, nomina nuda or misspelled names. The next step was to examine all over 9400 species-group and genus-group names in- dividually, and to select all which either looked like eponyms by virtue of being in the genitive case (species names having the suffix -i, -ae, -orum), were personal or family names used as a noun in apposition, or were more or less ‘strange’ (mostly non-Latin or Greek) names, which did not seem to indicate any particular character of the species, its habitat or collecting locality. There were about 2500 such names. Thereafter I con- sulted the original descriptions of all of these ‘potential eponyms’, checking the possible etymologies or other clues to the meaning of the names. This work was also partly fa- cilitated by the several publications noted above on the etymologies of dragonfly names. Of the names retrieved a surprisingly high number, about 240 species and ca 20 genera, had been named after different mythological characters, most of them from Greek my- thology. Such names were especially favoured by M.A. Lieftinck, Friedrich Ris, Edmond de Selys Longchamps and W.F. Kirby. These were all verified using Google and then dis- carded. In addition there are around 70 species group names based on ethnic groups; most of these names were used by P. P. Calvert and A.B.M. Machado and relate to var- ious American Indian tribes. These do not qualify as individual eponyms. At least 15 names given to fictional persons in various cultural contexts have also been omitted. In addition there are over 100 names which look like eponyms, but actually refer to a lo- cality, a structural character or have no clear meaning. Examples of these names, which are not included in the catalogue are: Copera chantaburii Asahina, 1984, Chalybeothe- mis chini Dow, Choong & Orr, 2007, Dasythemis esmeralda Ris, 1910, Orthetrum lati- hami Pinhey, 1966, Coeliccia loogali Fraser, 1932, Perissolestes magdalenea (Williamson & Williamson, 1924), Leucorrhinia patricia Walker, 1940, Coeliccia poungyi Fraser, 1924 and Tetrathemis victoriae (Pinhey, 1963). The catalogue also excludes the roughly 60 na- mes which denote mainly historical figures from Roman or Greek antiquity or biblical or other religious names. Examples of these are Mecistogaster amalia (Burmeister, 1839), Erythrodiplax berenice (Drury, 1773), Indolestes buddha Fraser, 1922, Erythrodiplax cle- opatra Ris, 1911, Indagrion gautama Fraser, 1922, Genus Sapho Selys, 1853, Neurothe- mis tullia (Drury, 1773). Following this winnowing process it was established that a total of 1982 taxon names have been based (fully or partly) on the name of an identifiable person born after the year 1400 AD, or is a cryptic dedication to him or her. The actual number is surely a little higher since there are about 25 species epithets based on personal names given as noun in apposition. These names cannot confidently be linked to any particular person, although some of them may be ‘secret’ eponyms. They are listed separately on page 167 at the end of the catalogue. 4 Eponym catalogue of Odonata Only a very few original descriptions provide detailed etymologies of the eponyms cre- ated, with the complete name and year of birth of the person honoured.