Taxonomic Swap 33173
(Committed on 2018-06-20)
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Comments
I checked The Reptile Database citations for "Aspidoscelis neomexicanus"... same Pyron & Burbrink (2013) paper, and a Cordes & Walker (2016) that actually calls this species Aspidoscelis neomexicana. I'm not sure what's going on here, but strongly believe that nomenclatural changes should come with some kind of documented and coherent rationale. It looks like The Reptile Database is just kind of doing its own thing here, diverging from all the works on the genus I've read, without telling us why...
Can you check with Peter Uetz p.uetz at icloud dot com at the Reptile Database and report back here?
Aha. Further poking around on The Reptile Database and I find that the change in gender comes from Tucker et al. (2016). In the future, could taxon swaps like this include a citation of the work that provides the rationale for the swap? And it would be nice if The Reptile Database, likewise, provided on each species page a citation indicating "this is the work on which our usage of the name is based". I just double-checked, and for both Aspidoscelis neomexicanus and Aspidoscelis tesselatus there is no citation of Tucker et al. (2016).
I think there's just a goof on The Reptile Database in which Pyron & Burbrink (2013) instead of Tucker et al. (2016) are incorrectly cited for all masculine combinations in Aspidoscelis. So, I looked in Pyron & Burbrink (2013), found that article to be a dead end, and it took me a bit to track down where the correct citation is given (in discussion of etymology under Aspidoscelis sexlineatus). I sent a message via the contact form at reptile-database.org, didn't see your mention of Peter Uetz's email address until now.
I also noticed that there's gender disagreement between specific and subspecific epithets on some of these. These must also be goofs, unless there's a very odd gender agreement rule in ICZN that I don't know of. Looks like at least one of those (Aspidoscelis marmoratus marmorata) has propagated to iNaturalist.
Unfortunately we don't get that info from the Reptile Database. Essentially what I've been doing is:
1) maintain a set of 'explicit deviations', read more here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/reptile-taxonomic-working-group/journal/17244-reptile-database-update
2) excepting those deviations, occasionally pull in new species in RD not in iNat
3) excepting those deviations, look for species in iNat no longer in RD
4) swap these species no longer in the RD into the relevant destination
It means alot of issues only surface after the fact, but I can't think of a more streamlined approach towards efficiently tackling the hundreds of changes RD makes assuming we're trying to stay in sync with them
Ah well. I guess I'll just stick with trying to figure them out when they come down the pipe and happen to intersect my interests. :-)
Do we have any idea why The Reptile Database made this change? Was Reeder's interpretation of the gender of Aspidoscelis incorrect? Or is The Reptile Database deciding not to conform to the ICZN requirement for gender agreement between generic and specific epithets? The Reptile Database doesn't seem to provide any explanation, and the only work cited as using "Aspidoscelis tesselatus" on their page (Pyron & Burbrink 2013) does not actually do so (and doesn't even mention the genus Aspidoscelis!).