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Considerations for an International Approach to Taxonomy of Marine Fish
Author(s) -
Rosa Horacio
Publication year - 1951
Publication title -
transactions of the american fisheries society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.696
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1548-8659
pISSN - 0002-8487
DOI - 10.1577/1548-8659(1950)80[110:cfaiat]2.0.co;2
Subject(s) - confusion , scrutiny , taxonomy (biology) , geography , fishery , nomenclature , fish stock , biology , fish <actinopterygii> , ecology , political science , law , psychology , psychoanalysis
Due to the confusion and duplication which exist among scientific and common names of important marine fish, the study of the nomenclature of economically important species of fish of the world was undertaken by the Fisheries Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization. This work was started with a survey of the papers published on the taxonomy of tunas and mackerels. On careful scrutiny, these papers showed considerable disagreement in the numbers and the distribution of the species dealt with, due mostly to a lack of studies based on sizeable samples collected throughout the range of each species. Taxonomists, at the beginning of their study of marine fish, had neither help from other disciplines to supplement their studies nor means to get large numbers of specimens from widely separate geographic areas of the world. Consequently, their first works were not as complete as they can be now. Today taxonomy is evolving toward the development of broader approaches for the study of marine fish; however, there is still need for world revisions of many groups of fishes. It is recommended that taxonomists coordinate their efforts for the study of at least the economically important species of fish on an international basis, as some fishery scientists or biologists are already doing with some degree of success. If such international cooperation were established, larger collections of specimens made throughout the range of a species undoubtedly would reveal the identity of certain species now confusingly considered different because complete data are lacking. Taxonomic research conducted on a wider geographic area and based on larger samples would doubtless result in a reduction in the present number of scientific names of fish, many of which can be, and are, duplications.