ARCHAEIDAE Koch & Berendt, 1854

Judson, Mark L. I., 2012, Status of the family-group names of Arachnida first published in Band I, Abtheilung 1 of Berendt’s Die im Bernstein befindlichen organischen Reste der Vorwelt (1845), Journal of Natural History 46 (19 - 20), pp. 1273-1282 : 1276

Family ARCHAEIDAE Koch & Berendt, 1854

Archäidae (nomen nudum); C.L. Koch in Berendt, 1845, p. 56, 77 (as Archäiden). Unavailable name, based on generic nomen nudum.

Archaeidae (nomen nudum); C.L. Koch in Anonymous, 1846, pp. 871 (table), 877 (as Archäiden). Unavailable name, based on generic nomen nudum.

Archaeidae Koch & Berendt, 1854: 5 (table), 19; Menge in Koch & Berendt, 1854, p. 7 (table).

Type genus. Archaea Koch & Berendt, 1854 .

All authors have attributed authorship of Archaeidae to Koch & Berendt, 1854, but there have been a few exceptions in the case of the generic name Archaea . Sherborn (1923) listed Archäa Berendt, 1845 as a nomen nudum and noted that the spelling Archaea was used in the same work ( Berendt 1845), implying that it too was a nomen nudum. Strand (1928) considered Archäa Berendt, 1845 to be a nomen nudum and argued that Archaea had first been made available in “Leonhardt & Bronn, 1845”, citing it as “ Archaea (C.L. Koch & Berendt) Leonhardt & Bronn, 1845 ”. The work concerned is the Neues Jahrbuch abstract discussed in the introduction, cited here as Anonymous (1846). Strand (1928) noted that a sufficient diagnosis of the genus had been given in Anonymous (1846, p. 877), based, according to him, on manuscript data (“M.S.-Angaben”) received from Koch & Berendt. In fact this diagnosis is taken almost verbatim from information given on page 60 of Berendt (1845), which Strand overlooked. Neave (1939) followed Sherborn (1923) in listing the genus under the spelling Archäa Berendt, 1845 (again mentioning Archaea as a variant), but treated it as having been validly proposed in Berendt (1845). The question is whether the diagnosis provided in Berendt (1845) is sufficient to make Archaea and Archaeidae available from that work.

The diagnosis in Berendt (1845) and Anonymous (1846) explicitly applies to the family Archaeidae , but since this was monotypic at the time, it applied equally to the genus Archaea . Article 12.2.6 of the Code allows the combined description of a new genus and a single new species. Because only one species name, Archaea paradoxa , is mentioned, it might seem that the diagnosis could simultaneously make the family, genus and species available. This, however, is not the case because Berendt (1845) mentioned that three species were included in Archaea and the names of all three ( A. paradoxa , A. conica and A. laevigata ) were listed in the summary sheet (“ Übersichts-Blatte ”) distributed with Berendt (1845) (Anonymous 1846). Thus the information provided in Berendt (1845) and Anonymous (1846) is not diagnostic for A. paradoxa , which is therefore a nomen nudum in both works. Because no valid species were included, it follows that Archaeidae and Archaea are also nomina nuda in those works, only becoming available in Koch & Berendt (1854), where the species were finally described. Authorship must be attributed to both authors (as has consistently been done in the literature) because there is no statement to the contrary in that work (Code, Article 50.1).