Status of the family-group names of Arachnida first published in Band I, Abtheilung 1 of Berendt's Die im Bernstein befindlichen organischen Reste der Vorwelt (1845)

Abstract

The status of the arachnid names published in Berendt's 1845 work Die im Bernstein befindlichen organischen Reste der Vorwelt (Band I, Abtheilung 1) is reassessed. All of the new generic and specific names introduced there are nomina nuda. However, the family names Eresidae (Araneae), Eriodontidae (Araneae), Mithraeidae (Araneae) and Sarcoptidae (Acari: Actinotrichida) were all validly proposed and should be attributed to C.L. Koch in Berendt (1845). Two of these family names are currently in use: Eresidae C.L. Koch in Berendt (1845) (previously attributed to C.L. Koch, 1851) and Sarcoptidae C.L. Koch in Berendt (1845) (previously attributed to Murray, 1877), along with the coordinate superfamily names Eresoidea C.L. Koch in Berendt (1845) and Sarcoptoidea C.L. Koch in Berendt (1845).

Keywords:

• Arachnida
• nomenclature
• authorship
• publication dates

View correction statement:

Status of the family-group names of Arachnida first published in Band I, Abtheilung 1 of Berendt's Die im Bernstein befindlichen organischen Reste der Vorwelt (1845) M.L.I. Judson

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Pavel Klimov, Norman Platnick, Robert Raven, Ekaterina Sidorchuk and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on the text, and to Volker Mahnert for linguistic advice.

Notes

1 The publication date given on the title page of the journal is 1845, but it contains a reference to a work by Faulconer and Cautley (1846) that was published in January 1846. In the contents (p. VI) of the Jahrbücher, the year 1846 is indicated for Faulconer and Cautley (1846), although in the text (p. 461) this work is listed under the heading of books published in 1845.

2 Koch and Berendt (1854, p. 2) refer to “Eriodon Cuv.” in their introduction, but the authority (Cuvier) is clearly a lapsus for Latreille.