Bothriuridae, Simon, 1880

Acosta, Luis E. & Fet, Victor, 2005, Nomenclatural notes in Scorpiones (Arachnida), Zootaxa 934 (1), pp. 1-12 : 7

Transbothriurus ( Bothriuridae )

In a revision of the genus Bothriurus Peters 1861 , Mello­Leitão (1934) recognized a species group, "Grupo B ­ Bothriurus dorbignyi ", containing the old name Scorpio D’Orbignyi Guérin­Méneville 1843 and Bothriurus elegans Mello­Leitão 1931 . This two­species assemblage was given a formal subgeneric status by Mello­Leitão (1945), who gave the name Bothriurus (Transbothriurus) to the former "Grupo B". But he did not designate a type species, so the genus­group name did not become available (Art. 13.3). Bücherl (1959) proposed that B. elegans was a junior synonym of B. dorbignyi , reducing the 'subgenus' to a single species. This simple procedure of 'elimination' does not constitute a valid designation of type species (Art. 69.4), so the name Transbothriurus still remained unavailable. Bücherl et al. (1963) continued to recognize the monotypic 'subgenus' Transbothriurus and to assign authorship to Mello­Leitão (1945). Finally, Maury & San Martin (1973) discovered that an available name for this assemblage already existed: the long forgotten but valid genus name Timogenes Simon 1880 . They then placed Transbothriurus in the 'synonymy' of Timogenes , without ever acknowledging that the former was still unavailable. Lowe & Fet (2000) noticed the status of Transbothriurus, and then proposed Scorpio dorbignyi as the type species, in order to make it available. They (p. 13, 40) denoted their nomenclatural act as "nomen novum", as if it were a replacement name because of homonymy, while the right notation should have been "gen. nov." (they just wanted to make the name available). Lowe & Fet (2000) never used Transbothriurus as valid, since it remained as junior synonym of Timogenes , in accordance with the preceding taxonomic concepts. Thus, Transbothriurus was not thereby made available (Art. 11.6.3).