Cutthroat Trout Scientific Names

An essential part of the revisionary study of Cutthroat Trouts is the assignment of correct scientific names to each of the valid subspecies.  The naming process is one of the final steps in this study and can only be begun after taxonomists have completed their decisions about how populations are grouped together and which of those groups should be treated as species or subspecies.  The naming process is independent of the employed species concept or the nature of the data collected from the sampled populations.  It is neither affected by the taxonomic level (species, subspecies and, in some cases, variety) at which the name was initially used nor by the relationships to other forms as hypothesized by the discoverer.  Instead, the correct name is typically the oldest name that was validly published in accordance with the Code of Zoological Nomenclature (the Code) for any of the populations that are included within the subspecies or species.  Problems arising from difficulties in determining whether a name was validly proposed, to which population(s) the name belongs, or which name is the “oldest”, sometimes complicate the assignment of a name, and examples of some such problems in Cutthroat Trout nomenclature will be illustrated.