Brachistosternus weijenberghi (Thorell 1877) (Bothriuridae)

Acosta, Luis E. & Fet, Victor, 2005, Nomenclatural notes in Scorpiones (Arachnida), Zootaxa 934 (1), pp. 1-12 : 2

Brachistosternus weijenberghi (Thorell 1877) (Bothriuridae)

Telegonus weijenberghii Thorell 1877a: 173 .

Telegonus weyenberghii: Thorell 1877b: 205 . Incorrect subsequent spelling.

Brachistosternus weyenberghii Lowe & Fet 2000: 51 ; Ojanguren Affilastro 2002: 203; 2003: 320; 2004: 34. Unjustified emendation (junior objective synonym).

Thorell (1877a) dedicated Telegonus Weijenberghii to Prof. Hendrik Weyenbergh, who sent him the type specimen from Argentina. Lowe & Fet (2000: 52) stressed that the species name should be constructed using the correct spelling of the person name, and interpreted that such an emendation was already made by Thorell himself: in 1877b, p. 205 (and in the reprinted paper of 1878, p.259) the species and the personal names were spelled weyenberghii and Weyenbergh respectively. But as Lowe & Fet (2000) show, almost all subsequent authors ignored Thorell's (1877b, 1878) correction, and no less than 30 citations followed the original spelling using 'ij' instead of 'y'. In the original publication this person is consistently mentioned as 'Prof. Weijenbergh' (p. 143, 172, 173, 175, 177, 182). Surprisingly enough, the person in question initially spelled his own name 'Weijenbergh', and only later changed it to Weyenbergh: the original name was used at least until 1868 (Tijdschrift voor Entomologie, vol. 11), but in 1871 (vol. 14) he began to employ the modified name (S. Tiemersma, in litt.). In any case, it appears that Thorell was unaware of that change. Only clear evidence of an inadvertent error, contained in the original publication itself, allows to emend an original spelling (Art. 32.5.1). This is not the case with Telegonus weijenberghii , since the author was consistent on what he believed was correct. Thorell's (1877b, 1878) subsequent corrections are not evidence for the mistake since they represent an external source (precluded by Art. 32.5.1). Thorell's (1877b, 1878) versions are not 'emendations' (they do not include an explicit statement of the correction) but 'incorrect subsequent spellings' (Art. 33.3). Weyenbergh himself was the editor of both publications of 1877b and 1878 (Periódico Zoológico and Boletín de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias), so it is easy to imagine he simply corrected the spellings of his own name! The proposal of Lowe & Fet (2000) was explicitly intentional; therefore Brachistosternus weyenberghii Lowe & Fet 2000 is an unjustified emendation, and a junior objective synonym of Telegonus weijenberghii Thorell 1877a . This emendation has been adopted by Ojanguren Affilastro (2002, 2003, 2004), while Ochoa & Acosta (2002), Ochoa (2003) and Acosta (2005) maintained the original spelling. Aside, the spelling weijenberghi should also be retained because of being more widespread. Another part of the name that suffered some independent 'variation' is the genitive ending 'ii' as in the original, versus 'i', in most subsequent citations ( Lowe & Fet 2000). All spellings that use the genitive with one i are not more than incorrect subsequent spellings (Art. 33.4), but because of being more used, the single ' i ' is to be retained as the correct ending.