Talk:Xenodermidae

Latest comment: 5 years ago by Dekimasu in topic Requested move 14 May 2018

Requested move 14 May 2018 edit

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved as requested per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 19:50, 20 May 2018 (UTC)Reply



XenodermatidaeXenodermidae – This page should really be called Xenodermidae, with Xenodermatidae as a redirect page. I realize that many sources use Xenodermatidae. Many also use Xenodermidae, and there is a good reason to use Xenodermidae:

To quote from the most important reference on the subject[1]: "We now examine the situation of the family name based on the snake name Xenodermus (xeno = strange; dermus = skin). Reinhardt (1837) named this genus for the new species Xenodermus javanicus. The family-group name Xenoderminae was proposed by Cope (1900:731). For most of the 20th century, the names Xenoderminae, Xenodermidae, or Xenodermini were used universally as family-group names for Xenodermus and several subsequently described genera (e.g., Achalinus, Fimbrios, Stoliczkaia, and Xylophis) whenever the clade was accorded family-group status (e.g., Smith 1943; Bogert 1964; David and Vogel 1996).

More recently, some authors (e.g., Zaher 1999; Vidal et al. 2007; Grazziotin et al. 2012; Pyron et al. 2013) cite the family-group name as Xenodermatidae or Xenodermatinae. The authors of these papers apparently think that Xenodermus is a neuter Greek compound noun like Heloderma. This is not the case. The latinized version of the Greek noun derma (f.) is dermus and compound nouns based on the latter must take the gender (m.) indicated by its Latin suffix (–us). It was clearly Reinhardt’s (1837) intent to coin a Latin generic name of the masculine gender as indicated by his coupling of Xenodermus with the specific epithet javanicus, a masculine adjective agreeing in gender with the generic name, not the neuter javanicum. Consequently, the correct family name is Xenodermidae Cope, 1900, not Xenodermatidae." Andrew M. Durso (talk) 13:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

References

  1. ^ Savage, JM (2015). "What are the correct family names for the taxa that include the snake genera Xenodermus, Pareas, and Calamaria?". Herpetological Review. 46: 664–665.

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.