Draft talk:Tyrophagus phylloxerae

name

@Dyanega: Can you help here? I find no record of this species under Tyrophagus or Tyroglyphus in any of the databases I know of. - UtherSRG (talk) 16:27, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

This is a tough nut, for sure. It looks like the name is nomenclaturally available (see [1]) - there's a description and even an illustration. The only anomalous thing is that the listing in the Index ([2]) says "(From Trans. St. Louis. Acad., III,, 26)" which implies it might have been published twice. I haven't tracked down that citation, but it wouldn't render the name unavailable, regardless of what it contains; that description in Report 6 from 1874 is Code-compliant, even though they state that it's not possible to distinguish the species from other Tyroglyphus. There is no indication of a type specimen, and no genuine diagnosis, but those aren't required by the Code for pre-1930 names. There must presumably be some paper somewhere that transferred the species from Tyroglyphus to Tyrophagus, but I can't track it. While I don't trust BHL's indexing algorithm at all, it doesn't reveal any uses of the name Tyroglyphus phylloxerae after 1915, and no uses at all of the name Tyrophagus phylloxerae. I suspect that this is an available name, but a taxon that is impossible to recognize - a nomen dubium at best, and essentially forgotten to science (it might even be a nomen oblitum, which would render it unavailable, but someone would need to publish this). I would not be in favor of listing it in Wikipedia or Wikispecies until and unless there are recent taxonomic treatments of it as a valid name (not as a synonym, or as a nomen dubium); review papers referring to old importation records from the 1800s are not reliable sources for this sort of thing. Dyanega (talk) 18:06, 22 November 2024 (UTC)