[Nhcoll-l] Curating specimens with uncertain type status?

[Douglas Yanega]

This case is presently being discussed within the Commission.

At present, 5 Commissioners have ventured opinions. Four (including 
myself) have stated that they would consider the species name to be 
available from the original publication, though with very slight 
differences in reasoning. One considers the name unavailable.

I post this in part to let people know that we on the Commission take 
these things seriously, and we do like having them brought to our attention.

I post this in part to note that usually we achieve a consensus but 
rarely is it unanimous, and that not everyone in the Commission 
participates in general discussions.

Finally, I post this to note that we are in the process of drafting the 
next Edition of the Code, and this *general* situation will be 
accommodated there. By that I mean that the failure to individually 
discriminate the holotype from other members of the type series will, in 
the next edition of the Code, result in the type series being treated as 
syntypes, a significant change from Code 4; apparently this has happened 
a number of times since Code 4 went into effect in 2000, and taxonomists 
have evidently ALWAYS been treating those names as available, even 
though the Code technically does not support this. If this is taxonomic 
practice, then it seems prudent for us to codify it, rather than double 
down on the existing policy. I think people here need to be aware that 
the Commission can respond in this way, to bring the Code in line with 
what taxonomists are doing, rather than the proverbial "cart leading the 
horse".

This particular case would *not* fall under that new provision because 
there is a reference, in the publication, to a holotype *in association 
with a specific figure of a single specimen*; had the listing of types 
in the text been the *only* relevant material in the publication, then 
the consensus shifts (from 4 to 1, to 2 to 3) that the name would have 
been unavailable under the present Code.

Some cases really are challenging to fit into the existing rules.

Sincerely,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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