New World Monkey Nightmares: Science, Art, Use, and Abuse (?) in Platyrrhine Taxonomic Nomenclature

The taxonomy and nomenclature of N ew W orld monkeys is becoming precariously unstable and impractical, plagued by revisions aimed at conforming to approaches that reject the B iological S pecies C oncept for narrowly construed reasons and resulting in a hyperinflated taxonomy at species (often) and genus (sometimes) levels. This undermines a major goal of classification at the most basic taxonomic levels to ease communication and facilitate research. Since it is difficult to justify extensive changes in terminology without a deeply justified theoretical purpose or without showing what scientific benefits these alterations can bring, working primatologists need not accept this doctrinaire trend. Knowing as little as we do about what a species actually is, does not justify contorting the value of a species nomenclature so that it reflects nothing more than coat color, a node, or endpoint of a dendrogram. Am. J. Primatol. 74:692‐695, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.