Talk:Sphenophorus parvulus

Move from Sphenophorus parvulus

Hi IVicky I'm not sure you ever got an explanation: I was the person who suggested moving the pages here. I checked (not very thoroughly) and it looked like you were correct. You were just unfamiliar with how to do it. (I didn't know either until I looked around.) Invasive Spices (talk) 19:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

@Invasive Spices and IVicky: On what basis are you seeking to move this article to a different title? The references are fairly recent and call it Sphenophorus parvulus. Please explain. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 20:03, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi! I am trying to straighten out the names of certain weevil species. A basic principle in nomenclature is that taxonomic names are based on types. Unavailable type specimens often have led to incorrect conclusions about their identities. This is the case with many insects described by Thomas Say. Numerous names are affected, among them some for agriculturally relevant species. The problems has been ignored by North American entomologists for a long time. If such a junior name is well established and the applicable senior name is not in use, the unaccustomed name can be suppressed. Because these conditions are not fulfilled, the name S. parvulus cannot be preserved and becomes invalid (unless an application is made to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature). I am still uncertain how to implement these changes in Wikipedia. Past-and-Copy transfers are undesirable because the history of/to the original source would be disrupted. Wikipedia propagates moving the page to a new title with the respective valid name. This seems unproblematic in this particular case but maybe not in general. Perhaps my view is biased by nomenclature and its strict type concept. Simply renaming a Wikipedia page sounds to me like relabeling a type specimen. At the moment I do not oversee how this practice works when more taxa with existing Wiki pages are involved and how to deal with misinterpreted names. An example would be the hunting billbug, a misnomer used for one particular subspecies of Sphenophorus venatus, which actually is a subspecies (if at all) of S. placidus. The type of S. venatus is what has been called S. destructor. I doubt that moving the old Wiki pages with these names to new titles (which originally meant different things) is a good solution. Existing and new contributions and discussions would refer to different taxa with the same name. It certainly needs more thinking. Perhaps such complicated cases need new pages from scratch, built with existing elements merged by an administrator. Suggests are welcome. IVicky (talk) 07:22, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

I just realize that the name S. interstitialis has been used nowhere else than in catalogues. That means the junior name S. parvulus has to be maintained as valid and S. interstitialis remains invalid. I will get this fixed. Meanwhile, ignore the change to S. interstitialis. Sorry for having created this confusion. IVicky (talk) 15:58, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I suggest that before you move a page for taxonomic reasons, you open a discussion on the talk page and provide your rationale for the change, with a citation to an appropriate source. Then, if there is a consensus in favour of the move, or nobody objects, you can go ahead. You will find more on how to move a page here. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:38, 6 May 2021 (UTC)