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Erschienen in:
19.11.2020 | Letter to the Editor
Response to O’Connell et al. (2020): There are multiple ways to adapt taxonomy to conservation goals
Erschienen in: Biodiversity and Conservation | Ausgabe 1/2021
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Excerpt
Referring to Southeast Asian birds, O’Connell et al. (2020) [henceforth “OC”] imply that negative conservation consequences may arise from obstacles in permit acquisition and resultant delays in species description, and thus call for new guidelines regarding describing and naming species without a preserved type specimen. As stakeholders in zoological nomenclature, conservation and ornithology, we disagree and correct multiple erroneous assertions:
(1)
The authors provide no evidence for undue time lags between discovery and description of any bird species caused by delays in permitting. Permit applications for the newly described taxa cited by OC (Rheindt et al. 2020; Irham et al. 2020) followed standard procedures typical of many countries. Claims that this process is obstructive in certain regions should be supported by evidence.
(2)
The authors fail to demonstrate negative conservation outcomes for species that have been discovered but not yet described. None of the newly described species cited (Rheindt et al. 2020; Irham et al. 2020) is especially threatened by illegal trade or under consideration by the IUCN Specialist Group on Asian Songbird Trade. Although occasionally undescribed species are subject to trade, we see no evidence for a regular pattern.
(3)
The authors call for “…standardized guidelines…” for species descriptions without a preserved type specimen. The zoological Code (ICZN 1999, 2017) already accommodates (with varying degrees of community acceptance) fixing name-bearing types without preserved specimens under extraordinary circumstances (Donegan 2008; Krell and Marshall 2017). Since Linnæus’s (1758) Systema Naturae, the rules of zoological nomenclature continue to be adapted and updated (ICZN 2017; Donegan 2008).