Comments on the proposed conservation of Buettneria Case, 1922 (Amphibia) 1

I oppose the petition of Lucas et al. for the Commission to use their plenary power to conserve Buettneria Case, 1922 in preference to either of the senior homonyms. Both the initial proposal to conserve Buettneria Case,
1922 and the comments supporting this proposal ignore the full content
of Article 23.9.1 of the Code. This includes Article 23.9.1.1 stating
that a precondition for consideration is that the senior homonym has
not been used as a valid name after 1899. Buettneria Karsch, 1888 (1889) was used by Ragge (1962) and Buettneria Simroth, 1888 was used by Van Goethem (1975 et seq.) and Schileyko (2002), as noted by Hausdorf (BZN 65: 313). Thus neither of the senior homonyms of Buettneria is a nomen oblitum, and to conserve Buettneria Case,
1922 in preference to either would be to overturn Article 23.9.1.1.
This in turn would be an effective statement that the Law of Priority
no longer applies to infrequently studied taxa, of which there are many
hundreds of thousands. I suggest that this wider implication should be
given consideration by the Commission when they consider this issue.
Article 23.9.1.1 exists in this explicit form to protect the priority
of infrequently studied taxa. The proposal for conservation of Buettneria Case, 1922 uses the disingenuous but meaningless term ‘virtual nomen oblitum’ to describe Buettneria Karsch,
1888 (1889) to evade the basic issue that it is not a nomen oblitum and
is protected by Article 23.9.1.1. In my view, Article 23.9.1.1
precludes all consideration of conservation of Buettneria Case, 1922.

 Discrimination between the competing claims of Buettneria Karsch, 1888 (1889) and Buettneria Simroth,
1888 is a more legitimate topic for the Commission to consider and
falls within the realms of opinion. My view is that i) Simroth himself
replaced the name Buettneria with Buettnerella and
that if, as original author, he felt it necessary to do this, this
should have been respected by later workers; ii) when Van Goethem
(1975) revived Buettneria Simroth, 1888, he failed to treat
it as a nomen oblitum as it was under Article 23b.i in the prevalent
(1964) edition of the Code of Nomenclature. In that edition of the
Code, which would have still been operative in 1975, the fifty year
rule defined nomina oblita. The history of Buettneria Karsch, 1888 (1889) may be brief but it is immaculate.

 In conclusion, I support Mueller’s (2007) published proposal that the junior homonym Buettneria Case, 1922 be replaced by its junior synonym Koskinonodon Branson & Mehl, 1929. My preference would be for the seniority of Buettneria Karsch
to be recognised, but under Article 23.9.1.1 both of the senior
homonyms have a stronger case than Case’s juniormost homonym.