Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences
Issue Date
2016-11Author
Ceríaco, Luis M. P.
Gutiérrez, Eliécer E.
Dubois, Alain
Publisher
Zootaxa
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016.
Collections
Citation
Ceríacol, L. M. P. et al. [+ 492 coauthors listed alphabetically]. 2016. Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences. Zootaxa 4196(3):435-445.
Items in KU ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
We want to hear from you! Please share your stories about how Open Access to this item benefits YOU.