One of the most important documents published in zoology in the 19th century was in fact a rather mundane one: The Strickland Code:
Hugh. E. Strickland, John Phillips, John Richardson, Richard Owen, Leonard Jenyns, William J. Broderip, John S. Henslow, William E. Shuckard, George R. Waterhouse, William Yarrell, Charles R. Darwin, and John O. Westwood, "Report of a Committee Appointed "To Consider of the Rules by Which the Nomenclature of Zoology May Be Established on a Uniform and Permanent Basis"," Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for 1842, 1843: 105-21.
Note the inclusion of one Charles R. Darwin there, along with luminaries like Owen and Henslow. This document formed the basis for what evolved (sorry) into the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, or ICZN. It also affected the development of a similar code for Botany. Now another similar code for the naming of biogeographic areas has been published. It allows standard names for units of area that will allow commensuration between biodiversity measures, among other things.
One thing that bothers me is the inclusion of ranks for regional names. This has ever been a bone of contention in biological nomenclature, with people getting to the point that the ranks have been regarded by some (Agassiz) as the objective truth about taxa. Even less justification exists, I think, apart from convenience, in using ranks in geographical names. So long as it is understood by all to be conventional, that's fine, but I bet we are about to see 150 years of debates over the concept of district and whether it is more natural than a province.
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Comments
Of course district is more natural than province!
I don't really believe that, but I thought it might be helpful to get started straight away.
Posted by: Jason | June 18, 2008 12:52 AM
No, province is much more natural. It's easy to look down one's nose at a provincial, but it makes no sense to do the same to a districter.
Posted by: Bob O'H | June 18, 2008 1:15 AM
I prefer region, except on thursdays, when domain rules. Just because the world was created on last thursday.
Posted by: Lassi Hippeläinen | June 18, 2008 4:03 AM
As I suspected, one of the authors contacted me to say that they included it for reasons of utility rather than as a theoretical claim, and that it is not compulsory. It's more a codification of what people already do. But experience tells me we will have the Sepkoski fallacy at some point. Sepkoski compared ranks to derive his kill rate figures, using families and genera. Since these are entirely arbitrary ranks, the figures are suspect. Wait for Conservation International or somebody to start using provinces as a comparator...
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | June 18, 2008 9:12 PM