In zoological nomenclature, author citation is the process in which a person is credited with the creation of the scientific name of a previously unnamed taxon. When citing the author of the scientific name, one must fulfill the formal requirements listed under the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature ("the Code"). According to Article 51.1 of the Code, "The name of the author does not form part of the name of a taxon and its citation is optional, although customary and often advisable." However, recommendation 51A suggests, "The original author and date of a name should be cited at least once in each work dealing with the taxon denoted by that name. This is especially important and has a unique character between homonyms and in identifying species-group names which are not in their native combinations." For the sake of information retrieval, the author citation and year appended to the scientific name, e.g. genus-species-author-year, genus-author-year, family-author-year, etc., is often considered a "de-facto" unique identifier, although this usage may often be imperfect.
Rank The Code recognizes three groups of names, according to rank: family-group names at the ranks of superfamily, family, subfamily, tribe, subtribe (any rank below superfamily and above genus). genus-group names at the ranks of genus and subgenus. species-group names at the ranks of species and subspecies.
Within each group, the same authorship applies regardless of the taxon level to which the name (with, in the case of a family-group name, the appropriate ending) is applied. For example, the taxa that the red admiral butterfly can be assigned to is as follows: Family: Nymphalidae Swainson, 1827 Subfamily: Nymphalinae Swainson, 1827 Tribe: Nymphalini Swainson, 1827 Genus: Vanessa Fabricius, 1807 Subgenus: Vanessa (Vanessa) Fabricius, 1807 Species: Vanessa atalanta (Linnaeus, 1758) Subspecies: Vanessa atalanta atalanta (Linnaeus, 1758) The parentheses around the author citation indicate that this was not the original taxonomic placement. In this case, Linnaeus published the name as Papilio atalanta Linnaeus, 1758.
Identity of the author(s)
In the first attempt to provide international rules for zoological nomenclature in 1895,Blanchard, R., Maehrenthal, F. von & Stiles, C. W. 1905. Règles internationales de la Nomenclature Zoologique adoptées par les Congrès Internationaux de Zoologie. International Rules of Zoological Nomenclature. Internationale Regeln der Zoologischen Nomenklatur. Paris (Rudeval) the author was defined as the author of the scientific description, and not as the person who provided the name (published or unpublished), this was the usual practice in the nomenclature of various animal groups before. As a result, some disciplines such as malacology required a change in authorship regarding their taxonomic names as they had been attributed to persons who had never published a scientific work.
This new rule was not sufficiently precise, so in the following decades, taxonomic practice continued to diverge among disciplines and authors. The ambiguity led a member of the ICZN Commission in 1974 to provide a more clear interpretation in the second edition of the Code (effective since 1961). Here, a suggestion was made that the author is defined as the individual who "publishes the name and the qualifying conditions...or equally clearcut attribution of name and description".Sabrosky, C. W. 1974. Article 50 and questions of authorship. Z.N.(S.) 1925. Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 31 (4): 206-208.
The current view among some taxonomists restricts authorship for a taxonomic name to the person who wrote the textual scientific content of the original description. The author of an image is not recognized as a co-author of a name, even if the image was the only basis provided for making the name available.
If a true author of a written text is not directly recognizable in the original publication, they are not the author of a name (but the author of the work is). The text could actually be written by a different person. Some authors have copied text passages from unpublished sources without acknowledging them. In Art. 50.1.1 all these persons are excluded from the authorship of a name if they were not explicitly mentioned in the work itself as being the responsible persons for making a name available.
Most taxonomists also accept Art. 50.1.1 that the author of a cited previously published source, from which text passages were copied, is not acknowledged as the author of a name.
In some cases, the author of the description can differ from the author of the work. This must be explicitly indicated in the original publication, either by a general statement ("all zoological descriptions in this work were written by Smith") or by an individual statement ("the following three descriptions were provided by Jiménez," "this name shall be attributed to me and Wang because she contributed to the description").
In the 1800s it was the usual style to eventually set an abbreviation of another author immediately below the text of the description to indicate authorship. This is commonly accepted today; if the description is attributed to a different person, then that person is the author.
When the name of a different author was only set behind the new name in the headline (and not repeated below the description to indicate that description had been written by that person), this was a convention to indicate authorship only for the new name and not for the description. These authorships for names are not covered by Art. 50.1 and are not accepted. Only authorship for the description is accepted.
Prior to 1900–1920, there were several different conventions concerning authorship which is why we frequently find other authors than today for zoological names in early zoological literature. Art. 50.1 has been an accepted model since the mid-1900s. It eliminated the need to research who the true author was and all readers could verify and determine the name of the author in the original work itself.
Examples to illustrate practical use In citing the name of an author, the surname is given in full, not abbreviated. The date (true year) of publication in which the name was established is added. If desired, a comma is placed between the author and date (the comma is not prescribed under the Code, it contains no additional information. However, it is included in examples therein and also in the ICZN Official Lists and Indexes).
Balaena mysticetus Linnaeus, 1758 The bowhead whale was described and named by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae of 1758. Anser albifrons (Scopoli, 1769) The white-fronted goose was first described (by Giovanni Antonio Scopoli), as Branta albifrons Scopoli, 1769. It is currently placed in the genus Anser, so author and year are set in parentheses. The taxonomist who first placed the species in Anser is not recorded (and much less cited), and the two different genus-species combinations are regarded as synonyms.
An author can have established a name dedicated to oneself. This is rare and against unwritten conventions, but is not restricted under the Code.
Xeropicta krynickii (Krynicki, 1833) This terrestrial gastropod from Ukraine was first described as Helix krynickii Krynicki, 1833. The name was originally attributed to have been written by another person, Andrzejowski, but the description was written by Krynicki, and Andrzejowski had not published this name before.
Spelling of the name of the author In a strict application of the Code, the taxon name author string components "genus," "species," and "year" can only have one combination of characters. The major problem in zoology for consistent spellings of names is the author. The Code gives neither a guide nor a detailed recommendation.
Unlike in botany, it is not recommended to abbreviate the name of the author in zoology. If a name was established by more than three authors, it is allowed to give only the first author, followed by the term "et al." (and others).
There are no approved standards for the spellings of authors in zoology, and unlike in botany, no one has ever proposed such standards for zoological authors.
It is generally accepted that the name of the author shall be given in the nominative singular case if originally given in a different case and that the name of the author should be spelled in Latin script. There are no commonly accepted conventions on how to transcribe the names of authors if given in non-Latin script.
It is also widely accepted that the names of authors must be spelled with diacritic marks, ligatures, spaces, and punctuation marks. The first letter is normally spelled in upper-case, however, initial capitalization and usage of accessory terms can be inconsistent (e.g. de Wilde/De Wilde, d'Orbigny/D'Orbigny, Saedeleer/De Saedeleer, etc.). Co-authors are separated by commas; the last co-author should be separated by "&". In Chinese and Korean names only the surname is generally cited.
Examples: Pipadentalium Yoo, 1988 (Scaphopoda) Sinentomon Yin, 1965 (Protura) Belbolla huanghaiensis Huang & Zhang, 2005 (Nematoda)
Apart from these, there are no commonly accepted conventions. The author can either be spelled following a self-made standard (Linnaeus 1758, Linnaeus 1766), or as given in the original source which implies that names of persons are not always spelled consistently (Linnæus 1758, Linné 1766), or we are dealing with composed data sets without any consistent standard.
Inferred and anonymous authorships In some publications, the author responsible for new names and nomenclatural acts is not stated directly in the original source, but can sometimes be inferred from reliable external evidence. Recommendation 51D of the Code states: "...if the authorship is known or inferred from external evidence, the name of the author, if cited, should be enclosed in square brackets to show the original anonymity".
Initials If the same surname is common to more than one author, initials are sometimes given (for example "A. Agassiz" vs. "L. Agassiz", etc.), but there are no standards concerning this procedure, and not all animal groups/databases use this convention. Although initials are often regarded as useful to disambiguate different persons with the same surname, this does not work in all situations (for example "W. Smith", "C. Pfeiffer", "G. B. Sowerby" and other names occur more than once), and in the examples given in the Code and also the ICZN Official Lists and Indexes, initials are not used.
Implications for information retrieval For a computer, O. F. Müller, O. Müller, and Müller are different strings, even the differences between O. F. Müller, O.F. Müller, and OF Müller can be problematic. Fauna Europaea is a typical example of a database where combined initials O.F. and O. F. are read as entirely different strings so those who try to search for all taxonomic names described by Otto Friedrich Müller have to know (1) that the submitted data by the various data providers contained several versions (O. F. Müller, O.F. Müller, Müller, and O. Müller), and (2) that in many databases, the search function will not find O.F. Müller if you search for O. F. Müller or Müller, not to mention alternative orthographies of this name such as Mueller or Muller.