Alain Dubois

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle · Department of Systematics and Evolution

In 2007, a commented list of the amphibians of Togo, elaborated from the available literature, reported 49 species for the country. On the basis of that first paper, we herein add further museum vouchers and field data, and report the presence of 50 amphibian species in Togo. Three species are removed from the former list: Phrynobatrachus sp. aff....

In a recent publication, Dubois et al. (2024) reviewed in detail the type material of Boa murina Linnaeus, 158, now known as Eunectes murinus, and designated a specimen figured in Seba (135), that is considered lost, as its lectotype. Here we explore the known details of the relevant dispersal routes for Seba's Eunectes specimens and discuss the pr...

A recent paper proposing taxonomic changes in the South American snake genus Eunectes Wagler, 1830 (anacondas) is analysed. This paper raises an unusually high number of taxonomic and nomenclatural problems. The work does not rely on an explicit species concept, the analysis of the molecular data based on three mitochondrial genes is shown to be un...

The nomenclatural status of the nomina Agama cristata and Corytophanes (Squamata, Corytophanidae) are examined. The former should be credited to Merrem (1819), not Merrem (1820), and the latter to Schlegel (1826a), not H. Boie in Schlegel (1826b). The nomen Iguana superciliosa Latreille in Sonnini & Latreille, 1801 is shown to be a senior synonym o...

The present paper presents the etymologies, definitions and bibliographic references of the technical nomenclatural and other terms used in the LTH series of papers, as well as their equivalent terms used for the same concepts in the Code in the rather rare cases when they exist.

This paper presents the analysis of the single work published in 1759 that contains classifications of amphibians and reptiles, by Linnaeus. The nomenclatural status of the herpetological nomina in this work, particularly regarding their availability and taxonomic allocation, is clarified.

This paper is the first of a series devoted to the analysis of the early classifications of amphibians and reptiles published from 1758 onwards, and of the nomenclatural status of all the nomina of herpetological taxa established in these works. In this introductory paper, we present the new methodology and the terminology used for these analyses,...

This paper presents the analysis of six works by five authors (Linnaeus, Borlase, Gesnerus, Roesel von Rosenhof and Vogel) published in 1758 that contain classifications of amphibians and reptiles. The nomenclatural status of the herpetological nomina in these works, particularly regarding their availability and taxonomic allocation, is clarified.

In September 2012, the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature was amended in order to allow the online publication of new nomina and nomenclatural acts, provided some conditions are respected. One of them is that such electronic publications be pre- and postregistered in the database Zoobank, and that this registration be mentioned in their...

The frog species from Azad Kashmir described as Rana (Paa) barmoachensis Khan & Tasnim, 1989 is confirmed to be a synonym of the species from northern Pakistan described as Rana (Paa) hazarensis Dubois & Khan, 1980, currently referred to the genus Allopaa Ohler & Dubois, 2005 (Dicroglossidae, Painae). Characters are analyzed in detail to understand...

External and buccopharyngeal morphology of tadpoles of 30 species of anurans from various lentic and lotic aquatic systems of India are described. Taxonomic identities of most tadpoles were confirmed by matching genetic sequences (16S rRNA) generated from tadpoles to those of taxonomically identified adult anurans. The morphology of the tadpoles re...

The nomenclatural availability of publications, as well as of the new nomina and nomenclatural acts they may contain, require to follow a number of Rules provided by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. These Rules are rather complex and constraining regarding works published electronically. Many authors, editors and publishers do not...

This sixth report of activities of the Linz Zoocode Committee is devoted to the result of the enquiry launched by this Committee in 2021 about the status of new nomina and nomenclatural acts published so far on CD-ROMs. After a discussion of some problems of interpretation raised by Articles 8.4.2, 8.1.2 and 9.12 of the Code, we provide information...

The history of the taxonomy and nomenclature of the giant Eurasian salamanders of the genus Andrias is provided, with a complete list of available nomina of all extinct and extant species, indicating their current nomenclatural status, their type-specimens and type-localities.

The Rules provided by the Code for the nomenclatural status of nomina originally published as invalid synonyms of nomina considered valid are complex, and often ignored or misunderstood by taxonomists. A detailed analysis of these Rules is presented and a terminology is proposed for the categories of nomina. The actual implementation of these Rules...

The present work proposes a precise formal definition and an expansion of the concept of ‘nomenclatural act’ which is present in the Code but not clearly delimitated from other related concepts, and provides a list of the published statements that correspond to this concept, a terminology for this and related acts, as well as for information affect...

The Rules provided by the Code for the nomenclatural status of nomina originally published as invalid synonyms of nomina considered valid are complex, and often ignored or misunderstood by taxonomists. A detailed analysis of these Rules is presented and a terminology is proposed for the categories of nomina. The actual implementation of these Rules...

This fourth report of activities of the Linz Zoocode Committee is devoted to a detailed survey of the problems raised by the current Rules of the Code regarding the nomenclatural availability of works published on paper, concerning their dates, material and administrative parameters of publication, and various other matters. It proposes a few chang...

This fifth report of activities of the Linz Zoocode Committee is devoted to a detailed survey of the problems raised by the current Rules of the Code, published in 2012, regarding the nomenclatural availability of works published online and registered on the database Zoobank. It points to various deficiencies in these Rules and in the conception an...

This fourth report of activities of the Linz Zoocode Committee is devoted to a detailed survey of the problems raised by the current Rules of the Code regarding the nomenclatural availability of works published on paper, concerning their dates, material and administrative parameters of publication, and various other matters. It proposes a few chang...

This third report of activities of the Linz Zoocode Committee provides comments and proposals regarding the concepts, terminology and Rules used to establish the nomenclatural availability of publications, whatever their support and mode of distribution (on paper, on discs or electronic).

This second report of activities of the Linz Zoocode Committee is devoted to a careful analysis of the concept of nomenclatural availability in zoological nomenclature, a concept often misunderstood and misused in recent taxonomic publications. It provides a definition of this expression and establishes a new nomenclatural principle, the Principle...

This study seeks to clarify the taxonomic identity of three adult frogs and two tadpoles from Rara Lake situated in Rara National Park, Mugu district, Western Nepal, using both phenotypic and mitochondrial sequence data (16S rRNA gene). Based on the molecular data, we determined our specimens belonged to two species; Paa cf. ercepeae (Dubois, 1974)...

This study seeks to clarify the taxonomic identity of three adult frogs and two tadpoles from Rara Lake situated in Rara National Park, Mugu district, Western Nepal, using both phenotypic and mitochondrial sequence data (16S rRNA gene). Based on the molecular data, we determined our specimens belonged to two species; Paa cf. ercepeae (Dubois, 1974)...

We address here a few nomenclatural problems concerning some salamander nomina of the plethodontid genus Desmognathus Baird, 1850: the identification of the scriptores (first users) of aponyms (subsequent spellings) in cases of primary homonymy; the validity of airesies (first reviser actions) in special cases; and the validity of neotype designati...

The new frog nomen Ololygon heyeri was inadvertently first published by Weygoldt (1986) associated with characters that could make it nomenclaturally available under Article 13 of the Code, but the epithet heyeri was consistently written there between quotation marks, which makes it unavailable under Articles 8.3 and 11.5. This nomen was made avail...

A basic concept of zoological nomenclature is that of onomatophore, called ‘name-bearing type’ in the Code. Onomatophores allow objective allocation of the nomina to taxa through specimens or nominal taxa. In the genus-series (i.e., for nomina of genera and subgenera), this allocation is made through nominal species, the so-called ‘type species’. T...

Synonymic and related (logonymic) lists play important roles in taxonomy: they give the valid and correct nomina of the taxa of a zoological group, they allow to know whether nomina are available for naming newly recognised taxa, and they provide a condensed history of the taxonomy of the group. To be really useful, such lists should be complete an...

The term metamorph for just metamorphosed amphibians appeared surreptitiously in the batrachological literature. It is shown here that this term is linguistically unjustified and conceptually confusing, as it has never been associated with a clear, formal definition stating in particular when does this developmental stage start and end. The use of...

The term metamorph for just metamorphosed amphibians appeared surreptitiously in the batrachological literature. It is shown here that this term is linguistically unjustified and conceptually confusing, as it has never been associated with a clear, formal definition stating in particular when does this developmental stage start and end. The use of...

Alpha taxonomy endeavours to propose a coherent vision of existing species and, simultaneously, to individualize the natural entities useful to understand evolutionary processes. This ideal is especially difficult when available data lack congruence. Here we address the polytypic species Synallaxis rutilans (ruddy spinetail), a suboscine passerine...

Alpha taxonomy endeavours to propose a coherent vision of existing species and, simultaneously, to individualize the natural entities useful to understand evolutionary processes. This ideal is especially difficult when available data lack congruence. Here we address the polytypic species Synallaxis rutilans (ruddy spinetail), a suboscine passerine...

Zoological nomenclature is the discipline of taxonomy responsible for regulating the scientific names of animal species. It has its roots in Carolus Linnaeusʼ work and has been governed by an international Code since the turn of the 20th century. Its vocabulary, on the other hand, is not always clear. Various authors have established new terminolog...

According to the Code currently in force, taxonomic works presenting nomenclatural novelties published on optical discs may be nomenclaturally available only if published between 1985 and 2013, and respecting some conditions allowing their nomenclatural promulgation. These works will remain accessible to readers only as long as the technologies all...

A recent checklist of the Amphibia of Indochina contains several nomenclatural errors that should be corrected before they spread: two species-series and two genus-series treated as valid in this work are invalid; the authorships and dates of several family-series and of all class-series nomina mentioned are wrong; the information provided about on...

According to the Code currently in force, taxonomic works presenting nomenclatural novelties published on optical discs may be nomenclaturally available only if published between 1985 and 2013, and respecting some conditions allowing their nomenclatural promulgation. These works will remain accessible to readers only as long as the technologies all...

According to the Code currently in force, taxonomic works presenting nomenclatural novelties published on optical discs may be nomenclaturally available only if published between 1985 and 2013, and respecting some conditions allowing their nomenclatural promulgation. These works will remain accessible to readers only as long as the technologies all...

The ‘suppression’ (invalidation) for nomenclatural purposes by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature of the work Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes Ovipares et des Serpens first published by La Cepède from 1788 to 1790 brought no benefit of any kind to zoological taxonomy and nomenclature but generated several nomenclatural proble...

The ‘suppression’ (invalidation) for nomenclatural purposes by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature of the work Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes Ovipares et des Serpens first published by La Cepède from 1788 to 1790 brought no benefit of any kind to zoological taxonomy and nomenclature but generated several nomenclatural proble...

For almost 30 years, there have been active discussions about the taxonomic impediment and the challenge this represents to address the current human-induced biodiversity crisis. From the start (Systematics Agenda 2000, 1994), the term ‘taxonomic impediment’ has been ambiguous, designating both the insufficiency and inadequacy of the resources put...

Zoological nomenclature, the discipline of taxonomy responsible for managing the scientific names of animal taxa, takes its roots in the work of Carolus Linnaeus, and has been governed by an international Code since the beginning of the 20th century. Like any other scientific discipline, it has developed its own vocabulary, which has gotten increas...

Just after the publication of our paper (Dubois et al. 2021), we discovered that, in Table 1, pages 443 and 444 are identical, and the actual page 443 is missing. We here provide this page, and we took this opportunity to correct a few other errors in this paper. We provide below corrections only in the case of misspellings or other errors that may...

A taxon, traditionally referred to the rank order, encompassing all recent taxa of caecilians and their close fossil relatives, is highly supported as holophyletic in all recent cladistic analyses of Amphibia. Under the Duplostensional Nomenclatural System, among 12 nomina available in the literature, only one, Gymnophiona Rafinesque, 1814, qualifi...

About Authorship and date of the genus Typhlops and the family Typhlopidae.

The nomenclatural status of 17 class-series nomina (13 diplorhizonyms and 4 haplorhizonyms), based on the single or primary stems Anura, Urodela and Batrachia that had been set aside in our previous papers of this series is examined. None of them is currently valid under the Duplostensional Nomenclatural System, four of them are unavailable (includ...

Under the Duplostensional Nomenclatural System, the valid nomen of the class including all recent amphibians and all the Palaeozoic groups of anamniote tetrapods subsequent to the ‘lissamphibian-amniote phylogenetic split’ is the sozodiaphonym Amphibia Blainville, 1816. This corresponds to the usage that has been in force for two centuries in thous...

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (Anonymous 1999; ‘the Code’ below) provides Rules for the nomenclature of the ‘names of the group family’, or family-series nomina (Dubois 2000). These Rules have long been ignored or disregarded by some taxonomists, so that the authorship(s) and date(s) currently attached in the literature and in s...

A taxon encompassing all recent taxa of amphibians and their close fossil relatives is highly supported as holophyletic in all recent phylogenetic analyses of amphibians. Under the Duplostensional Nomenclatural System, among twenty nomina available for this taxon, only one, Lissamphibia Gadow, 1898, qualifies as a sozodiaphonym and appears to be th...

Virgotyphlops nomenclaturally unavailable.

Bungarus romulusi nomenclaturally unavailable

The first issue of the journal Bionomina was published by Magnolia Press (Auckland, New Zealand) on 24 December 2010. The journal originated from an evolution and expansion of the section ‘Theory and methodology’ introduced in 2006 in the journal Zootaxa, itself founded in 2001 (Zhang 2007). The purpose of this new journal was wider than that of th...

Although currently most taxonomists claim to adhere to the concept of ‘phylogenetic taxonomy’, in fact most of the zoological classifications currently published are only in part ‘phylogenetic’ but include also phenetic or gradist approaches, in their arbitrary choices of the nodes formally recognised as taxa and in their attribution of ranks to th...

A taxon, traditionally referred to the rank order, encompassing all recent taxa of frogs and their close fossil relatives, is highly supported as holophyletic in all recent phylogenetic analyses of Amphibia. Under the Duplostensional Nomenclatural System, among more than thirty nomina available for this taxon in the literature, two only qualify as...

A taxon, traditionally referred to the rank order, encompassing all recent taxa of salamanders and their close fossil relatives, is highly supported as holophyletic in all recent phylogenetic analyses of amphibians. Under the Duplostensional Nomenclatural System, among about thirty nomina available for this taxon in the literature, two only qualify...

The nomen Batrachia has been very extensively used in the scientific literature since 1800, but for two different taxa of recent amphibians. The first one, originally introduced by Brongniart (1800), corresponds to a taxon encompassing all recent taxa of frogs and salamanders but excluding the caecilians. The second one, used first by Oppel (1811),...

A taxon, traditionally referred to the rank order, encompassing all recent taxa of frogs and their close fossil relatives, is highly supported as holophyletic in all recent phylogenetic analyses of Amphibia. Under the Duplostensional Nomenclatural System, among more than thirty nomina available for this taxon in the literature, two only qualify as...

We related the fi rst commented list of the amphibian species of Burkina Faso. To obtain contemporary data, we investigated six sites from July 2017 to September 2018. Th e survey is unique for West Africa in combining a variety of diff erent habitat types, e.g. Sahelian areas, grassland and woodland savannahs, fl oodplains, gallery forests and agr...

A basic reason for the diverging interpretations regarding the nomenclatural status of ‘retracted' publications lies in different understandings of some ‘simple’ terms like ‘issued’, used in Article 8 of the Code but not defined in this text. After a discussion of the questions at stake, formal definitions of some of these terms are provided.

This work introduces a series of papers devoted to the ascertainment of the valid nomina, under the revised Duplostensional Nomenclatural System (DONS-2), of the highest taxa (from the rank order to the rank class) of recent amphibians and ‘reptiles’. The main general features of the DONS approach to class-series nomenclature (above the rank superf...

The nomen ‘Ptyas carinata (Günther, 1858)’, applied since 1864 to a large colubrid snake species of the Oriental region first reported from Borneo, is shown to be in fact an invalid junior objective synonym of Ptyas dhumnades (Cantor, 1842), a species of the same genus inhabiting China, Laos and Vietnam. In order to preserve the use of the well-kno...

The recent publication in the journal Nature of a paper describing a new fossil as a ‘hummingbird-sized dinosaur’, followed immediately by a rebuttal stating that it was in fact a lizard, and then by the ‘retraction’ of the original paper, raised concerns about the nomenclatural availability of the new binomen Oculudentavis khaungraae that it intro...

Background: Cases of polydactyly in natural populations of amphibians have attracted great interest from biologists. At the end of the 1940s, the French biologist Jean Rostand discovered a polymorphic syndrome in some water frog (Anura: Pelophylax) populations that included polydactyly and some severe morphological anomalies (he called it 'anomaly...

This lecture discusses a number of problems faced by zoological nomenclature in our "century of extinctions", and presents recommendations for good practice, as well as proposals of modifications of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature

In 2012, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature decided to change the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and to provide a path to afford nomenclatural availability to new nomina and nomenclatural acts through their publication online, as long as the work containing them is preregistered on the website Zoobank under preci...

This paper explores two aspects of the question of the allocation of nomina to taxa in zoological nomenclature. The widespread belief that this allocation is effected only through onomatophores (‘types’) is shown to be wrong: if onomatophores only were involved, each zoological nomen would apply to all the taxa including the specimen(s) designated...

In July 2014, the international meeting ‘Burning questions and problems of zoological nomenclature’ was held in Linz (Austria). It acknowledged the presence in the current International Code of Zoological Nomenclature of a number of severe problems, and accordingly decided the creation of a new international body, the Linz Zoocode Committee (LZC),...

Here we present the first new data about the mysterious "anomaly P" of green frogs (genus Pelophylax) in about 50 years. We established that the gastropod Planorbarius corneus could be an intermediate host (or vector) of the infectious agent of the anomaly P. Symmetrical cases of polydactyly, the anomaly "cross" and heavy cases of the anomaly P, wh...

Sessions 15–38 of the Linz Zoocode Committee (May 2017 – October 2019). 1–2 LZC Session 15. Preamble of the Zoocode: purposes and functions. 3–5 LZC Session 16. What is the meaning of ‘fixed content and layout’ in Article 8.1.3.2 of the 2012 Amendment of the Code? Consequences regarding this Amendment. 6–34 LZC Session 17. The Principles of the Zoo...

In the scientific literature, the availability, authorship, date and onomatophore of the four generic nomina of lizards "Platydactyles", "Hemidactyles", "Thecadactyles" and Ptyodactyles" published by Cuvier (1816) and of the genus nomen of toads "Otilophes" published by Cuvier (1829) as French scientific nomina in the plural, and of their latinised...

The epithet obsolerus recently used to name a new species of shark is doubtless an “incorrect original spelling” which must be corrected into obsoletus. However, a strict respect of Article 32.5.1 of the Code would not allow this correction, as the original paper did not provide “clear evidence of an inadvertent error”, which can be established onl...

In two distinct works published in 1877, Cope described three fossil genera of vertebrates, Hedronchus, Hemitrypus and Scapherpeton, which are now considered to be based on a single species of urodelan amphibian. The respective dates of publications of these works require to adopt Hedronchus sternbergii as the valid nomen of this taxon, which is no...

This is the first record of specific morphological deviations in the marsh frog on the territory of Russia. Similar anomalies were discovered by Jean Rostand in the 1950s in France and named by him as the "anomaly P". Our observations were made on the territory of the Privolzhskaya Lesostep' Nature Reserve (Penza region, Central Russia) in 2016 and...

Anomaloglossus is a species-rich genus of frogs endemic to the Guiana Shield that still harbors several unnamed species. Within the A. stepheni species group (which includes four valid nominal species), A. baeobatrachus has an uncertain taxonomic status, notably because the holotype was an unvouchered specimen depicted in a popular journal. Another...

Different authors have suggested that Anabates pulvericolor Sclater, 1858 might be the valid nomen for Synallaxis propinqua Pelzeln, 1859 or for Synallaxis gujanensis huallagae Cory, 1919. However, due to doubts regarding the taxonomic identity of Anabates pulvericolor Sclater, 1858, of which the unique type is lost, neither of these nomina has bee...

The Code provides no Rules regarding the taxonomic allocation and nomenclatural validity of class-series nomina (for taxa above the rank superfamily), which results in considerable confusion, arbitrariness and instability in higher zoological nomenclature. Currently, authors are ‘free’ to use any system or no system at all, and the only way to prov...