How to handle Chresonyms Plazi > DwC-A/COLDP > CLB

[camiplata]

I'm opening this issue for the COL team and Plazi to discuss how to handle Chresonyms. Currently this are published to ChecklistBank as synonyms which creates some inconsistencies.

For example:
Acanthodactylus bedriagai Harris & Arnold, 2000 appears as the synonym of two different names:

On the original paper it is stated that it is a Chresonyms not a Synonym.

@DianRHR @mdoering

[mdoering]

It might not be trivial for @gsautter to detected these are Chresonyms and not synonyms, but if it can be understood or manually corrected these should be given as synonyms with a Name.status=chresonym.

Note that Chresonyms MUST have an authorship

[myrmoteras]

may be @camiplata can provide a definition of chresonym?

In the above case, this name is part of a treatment citation and refers to a taxonomic concept, in this case the usage of the name by a given author (sec.)

that means, we have them annotated
see eg https://tb.plazi.org/GgServer/html/651A8796FF90FF89FFADFDCAFDD20DB9
and check here treatmentcitation
https://tb.plazi.org/GgServer/xml/651A8796FF90FF89FFADFDCAFDD20DB9

this "part" is not properly handled, since this means splitting the same name into two. This can only be properly handled if it is known which species go where.

---

here is a another example https://treatment.plazi.org/id/039D6A05FFC26B18FF19FC9AEA9EFCBA with part

https://treatment.plazi.org/GgServer/xml/039D6A05FFC26B18FF19FC9AEA9EFCBA

https://zenodo.org/records/6023313
here you can see an example of the "sec." how we apply it

[mdoering]

Chresonyms are taxonomic concepts in disguise of a name originally published by that author. The "authorship" on Chresonyms refers to the taxonomic concept, but not to the nomenclatural publication the name was originally described in. This leads to a confusion when not marked properly.

In the case of the Acanthodactylus busacki treatment above, Acanthodactylus bedriagai is marked as a treatment citation like this:

<paragraph id="8B8BDB13FFC26B19FF19FB9EED41FBBB" blockId="10.[151,1436,1002,1270]" box="[151,775,1094,1116]" pageId="10" pageNumber="367">
<treatmentCitationGroup id="AB24FC3DFFC26B19FF19FB9EED41FBBB" box="[151,775,1094,1116]" pageId="10" pageNumber="367">
<taxonomicName id="4C34A090FFC26B19FF19FB9EEC84FBBB" authority="Harris & Arnold 2000: 352" authorityName="Harris & Arnold" authorityPageNumber="352" authorityYear="2000" box="[151,706,1094,1116]" class="Reptilia" family="Lacertidae" genus="Acanthodactylus" kingdom="Animalia" order="Squamata" pageId="10" pageNumber="367" phylum="Chordata" rank="species" species="bedriagai">
<emphasis id="B9400701FFC26B19FF19FB9EEFEFFBBB" box="[151,425,1094,1116]" italics="true" pageId="10" pageNumber="367">Acanthodactylus bedriagai</emphasis>
<treatmentCitation id="0A95FD02FFC26B19FE21FB9EEC84FBBB" author="Harris" box="[431,706,1094,1116]" page="352" pageId="10" pageNumber="367" year="2000">
<bibRefCitation id="EFA5A6E2FFC26B19FE21FB9EECD5FBBB" author="Harris" box="[431,659,1094,1116]" pageId="10" pageNumber="367" refString="Harris, D. J. & Arnold, E. N. (2000) Elucidation of the relationships of spiny footed lizards, Acanthodactylus spp. (Reptilia: Lacertidae) using mitochondrial DNA sequence, with comments on their biogeography and evolution. Journal of Zoology, 252, 351 - 362." type="journal article" year="2000">Harris & Arnold 2000</bibRefCitation>
: 352
</treatmentCitation>
</taxonomicName>
(part.)
</treatmentCitationGroup>
</paragraph>

This is largely fine, especially the bibRefCitation refers correctly to the usage by Harris.
But the authorship of the scientific name in <taxonomicName> is also given as authorityName="Harris & Arnold". That incorrectly assumes the species was originally published by Harris & Arnold in 2000, when in fact it is a much older name from 1881.

For known Chresonyms the name authorship should therefore be either left blank - or the name should be marked as a Chresonym so users like ChecklistBank understand the authorship of the name is a concept/usage authorship in disguise.

[mdoering]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chresonym which you often find with Reptile names

[mdoering]

you can find many Chresonyms in ReptileDB, usually with all caps authorships:
https://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Acanthodactylus&species=bedriagai

[gsautter]

But the authorship of the scientific name in <taxonomicName> is also given as authorityName="Harris & Arnold". That incorrectly assumes the species was originally published by Harris & Arnold in 2000, when in fact it is a much older name from 1881.

This looks like a bit of a punctuation nightmare, to be honest ... normally, citations of subsequent name usages have a colon or dash between the binomial and the treatment authors (or the bibliographic citation in general) ... without that, it's impossible to tell that "Harris & Arnold, 2000" is not the actual authority, even for my own eyeballs ... in other words, if the exact same taxon name string Acanthodactylus bedriagai Harris & Arnold, 2000 was in the "nomenclature" sections, the interpretation of "Harris & Arnold, 2000" as the authority would (for what I understand) be correct.
The crux is that taxon names are tagged way before treatments, simply because they are the very thing that informs treatment tagging, in combination with the headings ... at the very least, this means we'd have to add some post-processing of cresonymy sections after the treatment boundaries and structure are established (and most likely even verified by QC) ... not exactly straightforward, this one ...

[mdoering]

I can imagine, luckily Chresonyms are not that abundant. The only way to know these are Chresonyms is the heading Chresonyms before the citations start.

[gsautter]

Well, looks like another application of putting an optional "type" attribute on treatment citations, defaulting to "synonym" if the name differs from the treatment taxon, but also able to take the value "cresonym", as well as "exclusion" (for treatment citations starting with "nec" or "not"), and then handle these treatment citations accordingly when packing the DwCA and CoL-DP ... feels like another mass update lining up ...

[myrmoteras]

I can imagine, luckily Chresonyms are not that abundant. The only way to know these are Chresonyms is the heading Chresonyms before the citations start.

Are you sure @mdoering they are not abundant? May be I misunderstand the term Chresonym: For me they are in most of the treatments besides new species?

[mdoering]

I am not sure in treatments no. In checklist data we see them rarely. Maybe you are right. Do you happen to have other examples to look at?

[DianRHR]

Detecting and labeling Chresonyms is not a trivial matter and unfortunatelly they are not always properly distinguished as stated by Dubois (2012) and (2010) nor in articles or in checklist databases.

@myrmoteras if you want to have a wider explanation of the chresonyms and the difference from using "nec" or not this articles might be useful.

2012_Dubois_Bionomina_bn00005p080.pdf

2010_Dubois_spellingsOfNomina_Zootaxa.pdf

I can imagine, luckily Chresonyms are not that abundant. The only way to know these are Chresonyms is the heading Chresonyms before the citations start.

Definitely this is the best (and safest) way to detect Chresonyms ... unless other form is stated on each article.

[mdoering]

Even if we can only mark them manually it would be a step forward already, so having some type attribute on treatment citations sounds sensible to me, @gsautter !