GENERIC NAMES OF THE FAMILY STAPHYLINIDAB H 



D. Subsequent designation. 



10. Unambiguous designation. 



a. By direct statement of designation. 



b. Special systems. 



c. By elimination (Opinion 6). 



11. By acceptance of some supposed prior fixation (but not by mere reference 



to it). 



Each of these methods is discussed below, with references to form, 

 pitfalls, examples, etc. In the dicussion of each method it is assumed 

 that none of the preceding methods has fixed the genotype. 



A. FIXATION UNDER THE PLENARY POWERS 



1. Suspension of the rifles. — At the Ninth International Congress of 

 Zoology, at Monaco in 1913, the International Commission on Zoologi- 

 cal Nomenclature was granted special Plenary Powers "to suspend the 

 Rules as applied to any given case, where in its judgment the strict 

 application of the Rules will clearly result in greater confusion than 

 uniformity" provided that certain technicalities be complied with. 

 This power has been used many times to legalize generic names that 

 would otherwise have been rejected and to fix as their genotypes species 

 that could not otherwise have been justified. 



This power transcends all the Rules relating to genotype fixation. 



B. AUTOMATIC FIXATION 



2. Monotypy. — If a new genus is proposed for a single species, that 

 species is automatically the genotype, and the genus is said to be mono- 

 hasic. (The term monotypic is considered unsatisfactory, since by 

 rule all genera have only one type.) 



This is the simplest of all type fixations, yet it is not without difficul- 

 ties. For example : the genus C was proposed with one new species 

 described. It has been tliought to be the monobasic genotype. How- 

 ever, more careful examination of the work reveals that in an appendix 

 two more new species were described. Since the appendix was pub- 

 lished with the main text, there were actually three species included. 

 Again, C. G. Thomson published many new genera in the Skandi- 

 naviens Coleoptera. Genotypes for most of these have been selected 

 from among the included species. But it has generally been over- 

 looked that many of the names in the later volumes were validated 

 in a key in the first volume, each with a single species cited. Many 

 of the designations are incorrect, for the genera are monobasic upon a 

 different species. 



Some of the points encountered in applying the principle of mono- 

 typy are discussed below. 



