B1 Vertaisarvioimaton kirjoitus tieteellisessä lehdessä
The omission of critical data in the pursuit of ‘revolutionary’ methods to accelerate the description of species
Tekijät: Zamani Alireza, Vahtera Varpu, Sääksjärvi Ilari Eerikki, Scherz Mark D.
Kustantaja: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Julkaisuvuosi: 2020
Journal: Systematic Entomology
Sivujen määrä: 4
ISSN: 0307-6970
eISSN: 1365-3113
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/syen.12444
Recently, Meierotto et al. (2019) proposed a ‘revolutionary’ protocol for the description of understudied hyperdiverse taxa. The premise of their study was to champion exclusively DNA-barcode-based species descriptions (=diagnoses), which would dramatically increase the rate of description and provide a ‘human-readable record in the literature’ (unlike a Barcode Index Number, BIN; Ratnasingham & Hebert, 2013) that can later be supplemented with additional information. Species are always delimited against already known species (Linnaeus, 1753, 1758; Mayr, 1992; ICZN, 1999; Naciri & Linder, 2015; Renner, 2016). This was also recognized by Meierotto al. (2019, p. 120): ‘Requirements for the publication of new species include (…) that they be accompanied by either description or diagnosis which can separate them from any known species with which they are likely to be confused’. However, the latter authors failed to diagnose their 15 new Zelomorpha Ashmead, 1900 species from 51 out of 52 previously known species (only the type species was used in the analysis) and their three new Hemichoma Enderlein, 1920 species from any of the five previously known species.