262 Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature 56(4) December 1999 Case 3018 Cervus gouazoubira Fischer, 1814 (currently Mazama gouazoubira; Mammalia, Artiodactyla): proposed conservation as the correct original spelling A.L. Gardner U.S. Geological Survey. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC 20560-0111, U.S.A. (e-mail:
[email protected]) Abstract. The purpose of this application is to conserve the spelling of the specific name of Cervus gouazoubira Fischer, 1814 for the brown brocket deer of South America (family cervidae). This spelling, rather than the original gouazoupira, has been in virtually universal usage for almost 50 years. Keywords. Nomenclature; taxonomy; Mammalia; Artiodactyla; cervidae; Mazama gouazoubira; brown brocket deer; South America. 1. Fischer (1814, p. 465) established the names Cervus gouazoupita and C. gouazoupira for the two Paraguayan brocket deer that Azara (1802, pp. 51, 57) described under the vernacular names Guazu-pita and Guazu-bira. Azara (1802) used the Guarani Indian name spelled in the Latin alphabet as Guazu-pita (p. 51; spelled Gouazupita in the 1801, p. 82, French translation) for the red brocket. In the same work he used the Guarani name Guazu-bira (p. 57; spelled Gouazubira in the 1801, p. 86, French translation) for the brown brocket. Fischer (1814) cited Azara (1802) as the sole source of these names and descriptions but (pp. xvii, 701) he spelled the vernacular name for the brown brocket as Guazupira, instead of Guazubira, and introduced gouazoupira as the specific name (in combination with Cervus). 2. For most of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries a number of additional names were given to red and brown brocket deer, some authors also basing their names on Azara's descriptions and Guarani vernacular names. As the systematics of brown brocket deer became better understood, the common and widespread brown brocket became known as Mazama simplicicornis (Illiger, 1815). Fischer's (1814) Cervus gouazoupita is the common red brocket, for which the name in use is the earlier synonym Mazama americana (Erxleben, 1777). 3. Hershkovitz (1951, p. 567) pointed out that "... M\azama]. gouazoubira Fischer (1814, Zoognosia, 3: 465, originally misprinted 'gouazoupira; antedates simplicicornis Illiger, 1815, also based on Azara's gouazoubira)'. Authors familiar with Azara's accounts of the quadrupeds of Paraguay (as was Hershkovitz) would have recognized Fischer's 'Guazu-pira' (and the derived specific name gouazoupira) as a misspelling of 'Guazu-bira'. Nearly universally, subsequent authors (see, for example. Miller & Kellogg, 1955; Hall & Kelson, 1959; Walker et al., 1964 and later revisions: Whitehead, 1972; Husson, 1978; Corbet & Hill, 1991 and previous editions) have used the spelling gouazoubira, as emended by Hershkovitz nearly 50 years ago.