1995/03/01 by Andrew R. Solow, Laurence A. Mound, Kevin J. Gaston · 1 voice · 2 citations
Environmental Science · Mathematics · #Forest ecology and management #Morphological variations and asymmetry #Species Distribution and Climate Change
paper · doi:10.1093/sysbio/44.1.93
openalex publication_date 1995/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Taxonomies are constructed by classifying specimens. Because classification is an im? perfect process, taxonomies contain errors. One source of error is lu ping, which refers to the fusion of species (or higher taxa). This paper focuses on a second source of error in taxonomy: synonymy. A species name is said to be synonymized if it is found to be equiva? lent to an earlier name. In some groups, the observed rate of synonymy (i.e., the ratio of the total number of synonyms to the total number of names) can exceed 50% (Gaston and Mound, 1993). Because some proportion of currently unsynonymized names will be synonymized in the future, the observed rate of synonymy is an underestimate of the true rate. This underestimation ay be particu? larly acute if the bulk of the names are too re? cent to have had a reasonable chance to be