Wulf wrote:

"Perhaps your right. It is ridiculous, but on the other hand serious working herpers and taxonomists still have to do the work and get no credits on the name... I guess this sort of abuse is not what the ICZN thought of when publishing the code."

Perhaps all of the names Ray Hoser propose amounts to nothing more than junior synonyms. On the other hand, if some of his names do become valid, then at least he guessed right! The history of science is filled with cases in which scientists who did the hard work did not receive credit. The ICZN does NOT seek to give priority to names proposed by scientists who do the real work; it has decided instead to reward the first person who gave the new name to a species. The rough skinned newt is a good example. Taricha granulosa, for example, is the older name for Triturus similans, a cryptic species discovered by Victor Twitty. Twitty performed the hard work and noticed the differences between Taricha torosa and T. granulosa but ultimately he was not rewarded with the right to name the new species.

Ray Hoser is simply taking advantage of the ICZN's rules. The ICZN, as much as you might have liked it to, nevertheless does not prevent abuses like those by Ray Hoser.

One sobering thought is that most of the splits proposed by Hoser are probably invalid because of a lack of evidence. As such, his names would have little, if any, impact on taxonomy and taxonomic stability. So, perhaps the acrimony over his proposals really is much ado about nothing.

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