SOM Appendix Explanation of fields and abbreviations

The table in this appendix gives a full listing of the Cenozoic names evaluated in the TNL project which are considered to be valid, synonyms or subspecies.  Additional names were evaluated and assigned to other categories.  All names are available at the NSB database: www.nsb-mfn-berlin.de.

radorg_family_name - the radiolarian family to which the species belongs.  These families, as explained in the main text, are largely those of Riedel (1971).  This column is the main sort field for the list.

valid_name - the species name chosen as the preferred name, for species with synonyms, or the species name without subspecies, for those subspecies considered as valid.

taxon_name - the name as it appears in the databases and source literature

author and publ_yr - the author and year of publication of the species name.  Only given consistently for the valid name

taxon_status - our evaluation of the name.  In this SOM list we give V, S and B but the full TNL lists also G, Q, I and U.  The categories and rules for assignment are given here:

V - valid species.  The primary goal of the TNL, and our Cenzoic extract from it, is to link together various names that refer to the same taxonomic entity, not to enforce a particular taxonomic opinion on the ‘true’ correct name.  Nonetheless one name does need to be chosen in the database to provide the name for each entity, here designated as ‘V’.  The name chosen is based primarily on what appears to the dominant recent community usage, rather than rigidly following whichever is the latest proposed revision.  For most taxa, the current name in common use does respect prior taxonomic revision work.  For a few taxa no clear dominant usage exists in the community, and the choice of name for ‘V’ designation was somewhat arbitrary.  For living taxa it was in some cases possible to compare different proposed combinations with the illustrations of the type species for the different genera and from this pick a clearly preferred genus name, thus identifying the others as junior objective synonyms.  

S - synonym.  The majority of synonyms determined here are either objective synonyms (same original species description, different proposed generic assignments). Less common are subjective synonyms (different original species descriptions, thought to be of the same taxonomic entity), with this judgement generally based on published synonymy lists.  Only rarely did we ourselves create a subjective synonym, instead preferring only to make a note that the name might be a subjective synonym for another name in the list.  Also included here are the all too frequent misspellings.  Some of these are clearly only typos, but some appear to be persistent errors in usage, which we could clarify only by re-examination of the original publications. Listing mispelled names as synonyms is important since primary observational data is linked to this misspelled name, and non-specialists are unlikely to note the spelling error.

B - subspecies.  A code ‘B’ indicates that the subspecies is only a subset of the parent.  Other trinomial names whose relationship to the parent name were less clear were treated as ’‘S’, to indicate either that the proposed subspecies is not thought to have any biologic validity, being most likely simple within species variation, or, if pointing to a different named species, to indicate synonym relationship.  This most frequently occurred between taxa originally proposed as subspecies which have subsequently been elevated to species rank, e.g. Cycladophora bicornis spongothorax Chen is a synonym of the currently accepted name Cycladophora spongothorax (Chen) Lazarus. 

G - genus level identification, e.g. open nomenclature.  These names included those without a species name e.g. sp., and many names where a species name was given but a qualifier such as cf. made clear that the specimens being referred to were not conspecific with the name given. (database only)

Q - questionable identification names.  These were mostly indicated in the original publication by a ‘?’, i.e. genus species? and transcribed into drilling program databases by database staff as ‘genus species (Q)’.  There are probably a few cases in which names of the form ‘genus? species’, which indicate a conspecific identification but with an added taxonomic comment on the correctness of the genus assignment, were incorrectly transcribed as genus species (Q) but we were not able to check the original literature usage to identify and correct such instances. There are also ambiguous uses of the ‘?’, e.g. ‘?Genus species’, which both drilling program workers and we have treated as ‘genus species?’ (database only)

I - for names that do not belong to Polycystinea, primarily for Phaeodarian taxa. (database only)

U - for names whose taxonomic status could not be resolved, such as genus? sp. or names which could not be located in our literature database. (database only)

age_group - estimated age for the species, as explained in the main text. Consistently given only for valid species

match_code - N: name listed only in the Neptune database (mostly DSDP-era names); J: name listed only in the ODP Janus database; B - name listed in both the Neptune and Janus databases.  Blank means name was added during the editing process after initial merge of the source databases.

comments - a compilation of the comment fields from the various source databases.  Although considerable effort has been made to edit these to make them more comprehensible they still largely retain the flavor of the source database systems, and tend to be informal and terse, with many abbreviations.  The latter characteristic reflects both the convenience to the original enterer in using abbreviations in typing and the short maximum number of characters available for comments in some of the early database systems (often between 128-255 characters).  The four main sources for comments are - N: Neptune database; J: Janus database of ODP; No: Nori Suzuki database and/or additional comments added by this author during data processing for the TNL; RW_age: comments on the geologic age from the Radworld database.  Several authors contributed comments over the years to the Neptune database but most are either by Nigrini and Caulet who did the initial list editing (N&C) or Lazarus (dl or dbl). Janus comments usually include the initials of the database editor who entered/validated the Janus record, mostly R. Goll (RMG).  Numeric codes preceded by 'added by' in the Janus comment refer to the ID number of scientists in the Janus people names table.  Taxonomic names are frequently abbreviated but within the context of the individual record are clear.  For example,  the taxon_name Pterocyrtidium barbadense, with valid_name Lophocyrtis barbadense has as part of the Neptune comment ' n.comb. L.b. in Sanfilippo and Caulet 1998' - here L.b. is an abbreviation of Lophocyrtis barbadense.  Because so many of the literature sources are from the deep-sea drilling projects several abbreviations are used including Lnn (where nn is a number) for the Leg e.g. L14, BB or blue book for DSDP Intitial Report volume; IR for ODP or IODP Initial Reports volume, SR for Scientific Results volume.  Other abbreviations - comb.: combination; lit: literature; orig: originally; rad: radiolarian; radorg: www.radiolaria.org; rec: recent; ref: reference; strat: stratigraphic; syn: synonym xref: cross-reference; xfer: transfer. Some well known radiolarian taxonomic papers are abbreviated to the first letters of the author name with year, e.g. Pet71 for Petrushevskaya 1971.