Verodes Casey, 2007

Foley, Ian A. & Ivie, Michael A., 2007, Determination of the Correct Authorship and Type Species of Nosoderma, and the Impact on the Nomenclature of the Zopherini (coleoptera: Zopheridae), The Coleopterists Bulletin 61 (1), pp. 65-74 : 65-74

Verodes Casey , new status, new sense

The gender of Verodes has never been resolved. Article 30 (ICZN 1999) governs the determination of gender for generic-groups names. Our search of the authoritative Latin and Greek dictionaries indicates that Verodes belongs to neither language, making the name fall under Art. 30.2. Casey did not provide a derivation nor any hint of the derivation or gender of this name, rendering Art. 30.2.2 inoperative. Because Casey failed to intimate his intentions for the gender of the name by the endings of the species names included (he simply lists Nosoderma inaequalis as the type species, never actually using the species epithet in combination with Verodes ), Art. 30.2.3 is equally useless in this case. Art. 30.2.1 states ‘‘If a name reproduces exactly a noun having a gender in a modern European language … it takes the gender of that noun.’’ ‘‘Verodes’’ is the plural form of a Spanish noun, ‘‘verol’’ or the variant ‘‘verode,’’ derived from aboriginal Canarian (Guanche) (Anonymous 2006; Francisco Pando, in litt.). Although Canarian is not a strictly European language, the word is used as a borrow word in numerous references in Iberian Spanish for a plant endemic to the Canary Islands (Senecio kleinia Less., Anonymous 2005) and for the clumps of plants that grow between the tiles of roofs. Although the word does not appear in the ‘‘Diccionario de la Lengua Española’’ (RAS 2001), it is treated consistently as a masculine noun, and therefore would seem to meet the provisions of Art. 30.2.1. Therefore Verodes takes the gender of that Spanish noun, which is masculine.