How are scientific names changed? (Ref. tomato genus back to Solanum)?

Question

Are there large official scientific bodies that meet periodically to consider supplications for change? How is a scientist qualified to beseech a name change? Don't they frequently name a newly found (or, at least, believed to be newly found) species after themselves or their acquaintanances?
What are basionyms and lectonyms?

Answer 1

No, except for certain circumstances connected
with the rules of formal nomenclature, there are
no scientific bodies that meet to consider name
changes. The organizations that govern the rules
of nomenclature rarely meet, they conduct most
of their business by mail.

A name may be changed for any one of several
reasons: the same name may have been given
to two different organisms, in which case the one
named first has priority and the other must be
changed (this is a case of homonymy); different
names may have been given to the same organism
(synonymy) and again the older name has priority.

An organism may have been misclassified, if it
has been placed in the wrong genus moving it to
the correct one will result in a change of the generic part of the name, but not the second part
of the name (unless it is duplicated already in the
genus the species is moved to). What was once
considered a single species may turn out to be two
or more, in which case the original name is kept
for whichever species the original type specimen
belongs to, and the others have to be given a new
name.

Any scientist can describe and name a new species of organism without having to consult anyone. The publications are usually, but not
always, reviewed by other people and they may be
refused publication if they are badly done or turn
out to concern something that has already been
named. The scientist may, however, publish them
privately or be in a position (such as being himself
the editor of a journal) to publish them without
review or in spite of a bad review. This is not a
good thing, and has resulted occasionally in the
publication of some very poor work, but this will
eventually be sorted out by someone else.

It is considered poor form to name something
after ones-self and has rarely been done. Naming after acquaintances is frequent, often
these are other people working in the same area,
but not necessarily.

There are certain specified circumstances in
which an appeal to the International Commission
of Zoological (or other area) Nomenclature is
required. This is usually when a change otherwise
required by the rules of nomenclature would cause
a great upset to a very commonly used name.
For example, the type specimen of the housefly,
Musca domestica, is not a housefly - it doesn't even belong to the same family. No one is going
to advocate changing a name that has been used
so often, especially since it would involve changes
to the names of many other species as well. An
appeal to the International Commission in such
cases results in a decision by the Commissioners,
which then becomes binding on all scientists.
There is, however, no enforcement mechanism
for such decisions except the practice of journal editors. A maverick scientist may simply ignore
the rules and decisions and, if he can get his
papers published, they then have to be taken into
account by other workers. Fortunately this is a
rare occurrence and the system normally works
well.

The terms basionym and lectonym are not entirely
familiar to me, but I think I have this right for the
basionym. It is the base name on which another
name is constructed. In zoological nomenclature
a family name has to be based on the name of a
genus included in that family. The generic name
Cricetus (the hamster and related species) is the
basis, the basionym, for the family Cricetidae.
The prefix lecto- normally indicates a selection by
someone of one of a group of several possible
candidates for a name. I can not think of a
situation in which a person would normally have a
choice among several possible valid names for a
species except when the same person has given
two or more different names to the same species
of organism at the same time. This is not common
but does occasionally happen. I don't think I have
ever seen the term lectonym used, even in this
situation. When someone has described a new
species, but not selected a single specimen as
the holotype (the one specimen to which the name
is considered properly to belong) another person
may later pick one specimen out of the several
listed in the original description to be the formal
name-bearer. This specimen is then called the
lectotype. This happened often in earlier years,
but the rules now require designation of a single
specimen as the holotype. Often in the past a
set of specimens originally described as one
species turned out to be a mixture of two or more,
requiring sorting out of the specimens and giving
a new name to some of them.

Probably the most frequent cause of name changes currently is the splitting up of large genera
into a number of smaller ones, which requires new
generic names and changes to the generic names
of the species put in the new genera. This has
become almost an epidemic disease among some
biologists, especially those who are in molecular
classification and those who are cladists, which is
almost all of them these days.