Ornithological nomenclature is based on the bibliographic legacy from Charles Davies Sherborn, working in the Natural History Museum, London, and from Charles Wallace Richmond, working at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Despite their significant foundations, a complete data series has not yet been achieved. Gaps in their original coverage, though few, have not been resolved. The post-1850, the end date of coverage of the Index Animalium the level of completeness declines. I will discuss the coverage of the gaps in ornithology and address the primary issues of completeness and accuracy. Avian names in the Index Animalium have issues of accuracy in spellings, authorship and citation details. Most of the problems that can be pinpointed in ornithology will be paralleled in other zoological disciplines. Post-1850, ornithology is fortunate in the correspondence between Sherborn and Richmond. The Richmond Index to the Genera and Species of Birds, published on microfiche in 1992 and now available online, is founded on their collaboration. After Richmond, successive members of the Department of Birds at the United States National Museum were inspired and encouraged to update the resource regularly. Over the years since 1932 when Richmond died there were periods when this card index was well maintained and others when less time was devoted to it. In addition, the information available to ensure it was comprehensive is likely to have been only marginally better in respect of the Americas than was available to the Zoological Record. There has been more deliberate work done to maximise the collection of avian generic names. The initial sustaining role played by the Zoological Society of London must be recognised as regards both the Zoological Record and the Nomenclator Zoologicus of Neave. Unfortunately, ornithologists have undervalued the importance of the bedrock of information that these initiatives provide and hence they have done little or nothing collectively to maintain and complete these resources. The rare Book Room at the NHM holds what may be all Sherborn's Index Animalium slips. They are appropriately separated, but old explanatory separators written by Sherborn are fading and the original sequences within the segments look disturbed. These need study and potentially reorganisation. For their long term preservation and wider availability scanning is recommended (after any agreed reorganisation), It is hoped that the museum, whose Trustees were publishers of the 33 volumes that cover 1801-1850, will assess the situation and if necessary seek to raise funding for these measures. Other Sherborn material should perhaps be brought together with the slip cabinet so that all material relating to the Index Animalium is together or fully cross-referenced. At the Smithsonian, the Department of Birds holds two card indexes which Richmond created to support his primary card index. These are being preserved and are accessible on site.

1. Reinforcing
the
Foundations
Filling in the Bibliographical Gaps in the
Historical Legacy
By Edward C Dickinson
October 2011

2. OVERVIEW
• What are the foundations in ornithology?

3. OVERVIEW
• What are the foundations in ornithology?
• What are the major gaps?

4. OVERVIEW
• What are the foundations in ornithology?
• What are the major gaps?
• Have we actively sought to fill the gaps?

5. OVERVIEW
• What are the foundations in ornithology?
• What are the major gaps?
• Have we actively sought to fill the gaps?
• What have we done to fill them?

6. OVERVIEW
• What are the foundations in ornithology?
• What are the major gaps?
• Have we actively sought to fill the gaps?
• What have we done to fill them?
• How substantial a problem do we still have?

7. What are the foundations
in ornithology?

8. The Foundations in Ornithology

9. Documentation of ornithology
• Our knowledge of numbers of species of birds
achieved what was considered to have reached a
high level of completeness by the mid 20th century.
• Three very outstanding works document much of
what we know but each suffers from a drawback.
• Nonetheless by 1960 or so we had much of a strong
if not solid and comparable foundation.

10. What are the major gaps?

11. Quantitative gaps
• We generally presume near total completeness in
our awareness of new names for birds prior to
1851
• I believe that there have been relatively few
failures to record new names from then till about
1960, but that proportionately slightly more will
have been missed from 1961 to 1995.
• However, the computerised databases we have are
not geared to provide synonymies.

12. Some reasons
• Cultural and developmental differences have played
a role.
• Historically almost all names were proposed in what
we now term developed countries.
• Politics and languages can present barriers.
• Recently the fundamental problem has been a lack of
vision: institutional compilation efforts have
dwindled and perhaps lapsed.

13. Qualitative gaps
• Inaccurate dates
– e.g. citations from later texts; publishing practices;
unsolved problems relating to
part-works; mistaken attributions of first
authorship etc.
• Inaccurate authorship data
• Inaccurate spellings of names

14. This is the back of a rare
wrapper from an August
1821 issue of a part
work; the plates with it
carried French
vernacular names only.
Temminck provided
texts only in 1823.
Sherborn usually cited
new names from the
later text.

15. First state (June) Second state (Nov)
Proc. Zool. Soc. London 1887, p. 558

16. Have we actively sought to fill them?

17. Rather sporadically!
• Significant efforts up to the 1930s.
– Richmond, Sherborn, Mathews and Zimmer

18. Rather sporadically!
• Significant efforts up to the 1930s.
– Richmond, Sherborn, Mathews and Zimmer
• Since then a tight focus on listing taxa seen as valid
was expressed in name-specific efforts.
• Publication-focussed work has received renewed
attention in the last fifteen years or so.

19. Name-specific efforts
• The Peters’s Check-list volumes listed only recent
synonyms (e.g. not repeating older synonymy)

20. Name-specific efforts
• The Peters’s Check-list volumes listed only recent
synonyms (e.g. not repeating older synonymy)
• Subsequent world Checklists (e.g. those by Sibley &
Monroe, Clements, and Howard & Moore) gave no
authors, dates or citations (and had no synonyms)

21. Name-specific efforts
• The Peters’s Check-list volumes listed only recent
synonyms (e.g. not repeating older synonymy)
• Subsequent world Checklists (e.g. those by Sibley &
Monroe, Clements, and Howard & Moore) gave no
authors, dates or citations (and had no synonyms)
• The 2003 edition of Howard & Moore added authors
and dates and post-Peters names including synonyms
had linked citations.

22. Publication-focussed work

23. Synonym-specific work
• The most complete source certainly up to the
mid 20th century is the Richmond Index.

24. Synonym-specific work
• The most complete source certainly up to the mid
20th century is the Richmond Index.
• However this is a source only. Each card uses the
original combination of the name and no subsequent
combination is recorded.
• No card links a synonym to a name in use.

25. Synonym-specific work
• The most complete source certainly up to the mid
20th century is the Richmond Index.
• However this is a source only. Each card uses the
original combination of the name and no subsequent
combination is recorded.
• No card links a synonym to a name in use.
• No hierarchical list of synonyms has yet been
completed. Such lists (for genus-group names and for
species-group names) are sorely needed.

26. What have we done to fill the gaps?

27. Species-group names
• We guess that there may be 120,000 ± 20% avian
names to be registered retrospectively in ZooBank.
Perhaps 29,000 are in use for recognized taxa. Of
the rest, all synonyms, perhaps another 40,000 are
in held in databases. The rest have just not got
there.
• Causes: the diminution and eventual virtual
cessation of comprehensive “card indexing”; lack of
leadership; poor understanding of the gaps in the
basic works.

28. Genus-group names
A similar guess suggests that some 17,000 generic
names have been proposed.
While this may seem slightly bizarre at 1.7 per
species, many will be subjective junior synonyms
within ‘species-rich’ genera, and therefore
available for use, following the splits required by
recent molecular studies.
Currently only amateur databases.

29. Family-group names
Bock (1994) tabulated a total of 276 accepted avian
family names and another 1052 synonyms at
family-group level. Between 1860 and 1993 only 70
accepted ones were added.
Since then and not least due to molecular studies a
substantial number of names has been proposed.
Difficulties in locating some old works still needs to
be overcome to allow creation of a LAN that can
achieve consensual support.

30. The main sources
• Sherborn’s legacy: how much in the cards is not in
Index Animalium? How secure are these and is there
any back-up if they should be lost?
• The Richmond Index: scanned, but enquiries suggest
there is no claim to its having been constantly added
to in full over the years, especially recently.
• The “Reftax” database (MNHN, Paris): held integral
citational data. Abandoned!

31. The history of collaboration
• Good! Sherborn and Richmond exchanged letters
and Mathews was in contact with both men.

32. The history of collaboration
• Good! Sherborn and Richmond exchanged letters
and Mathews was in contact with both men.
• No evidence noted recently of any collective project
to ensure new names in ornithology are collected.

33. The history of collaboration
• Good! Sherborn and Richmond exchanged letters
and Mathews was in contact with both men.
• No evidence noted recently of any collective project
to ensure new names in ornithology are collected.
• Reliance has been placed on the Zoological Record
which alone does not suffice.

34. The history of collaboration
• Good! Sherborn and Richmond exchanged letters
and Mathews was in contact with both men.
• No evidence noted recently of any collective project
to ensure new names in ornithology are collected.
• Reliance has been placed on the Zoological Record
which alone does not suffice.
• No apparent evidence of leadership from the IOC,
the BOU, the AOU, or anyone else.

35. The history of collaboration
• Good! Sherborn and Richmond exchanged letters
and Mathews was in contact with both men.
• No evidence noted recently of any collective project
to ensure new names in ornithology are collected.
• Reliance has been placed on the Zoological Record
which alone does not suffice.
• No apparent evidence of leadership from the IOC,
the BOU, the AOU, or anyone else.
• Computers have brought little collaboration.

36. How substantial a problem
do we still have?

37. The present situation
• Very few alpha-taxonomists.

38. The present situation
• Very few alpha-taxonomists.
• Interest in nomenclature as a subject minimal.

39. The present situation
• Very few alpha-taxonomists.
• Interest in nomenclature as a subject minimal.
• Key databases now “amateur efforts”.

40. The present situation
• Very few alpha-taxonomists.
• Interest in nomenclature as a subject minimal.
• Key databases now “amateur efforts”.
• Availability of time and funds modest.

41. The present situation
• Very few alpha-taxonomists.
• Interest in nomenclature as a subject minimal.
• Key databases now “amateur efforts”.
• Availability of time and funds modest.
• Lack of encouragement from internationally
recognised leading professionals. Mayr is missed!

42. Future collaboration
• BHL shows collaboration is possible.

43. Future collaboration
• BHL shows collaboration is possible.
• Ornithology must embrace ZooBank.

44. Future collaboration
• BHL shows collaboration is possible.
• Ornithology must embrace ZooBank.
• Lists of Available Names.

45. Future collaboration
• BHL shows collaboration is possible.
• Ornithology must embrace ZooBank.
• Lists of Available Names.
• Validation of ZooBank Registration (especially
retrospective registration).

46. Future collaboration
• BHL shows collaboration is possible.
• Ornithology must embrace ZooBank.
• Lists of Available Names.
• Validation of ZooBank Registration (especially
retrospective registration).
• Without a degree of funding the quality of this will
never be thoroughly reliable and will be many years
in achievement.

47. Conclusions
• Ornithologists’ lost the plot as regards
building and maintaining nomenclators.
• The advent of computers coincided with
the minimalization of names but
encouraged keen amateurs to step in.
• Thus such work as has been done is of
limited value. The quality control behind it
is rarely well documented. Thus all
retrospective registration of avian names
in ZooBank will need to be validated from
the original publication.

48. The Sherborn ‘slips’ an appeal
• Without support from the NHM Sherborn would
probably never have completed Part II of the Index
Animalium.
• Most, perhaps all, of his slips, are held in the NHM Rare
Book Room. Their organisation needs careful study by
one or more bibliographers and will definitely yield
some new information and perhaps explanations for
some curious changes in his use of dates.
• The NHM is urged to arrange such study and then to
determine the best option for the continued
preservation of the slips and other related
Sherborniana, all appropriately housed.