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,0 FranciscoWelterSchultes 2009-03-16 10:38:25 74.7.3 should be modified. It should contain the content of Amendment Declaration 44 (which practically means that the Article was replaced and that a statement of the taxonomic purpose is not required): The wording of Article 74.7.3 is amended to read 'contain an express statement of deliberate designation (merely citing a specimen as "lectotype" is insufficient)'. Example directly below Article 74.7.3: 'Example. A statement such as "lectotype hereby designated", "lectotype by present designation", "I choose specimen X as lectotype" would fulfil this requirement, but "lectotype: specimen X" would not'. 'Recommendation 74G. Not merely for curatorial purposes. The designation of lectotypes should be done as part of a revisionary or other taxonomic work to enhance the stability of nomenclature, and not for mere curatorial convenience'. These amendments were backdated and apply to all works published after 1999. Indirectly this means that the "express statement" in the definition of the term "designation" in the Glossary does not mean "express statement of deliberate designation". I would prefer to have Recommendation 74G as an obligate rule and not only as a recommendation. I would also consider it very helpful for taxonomic work if the requirement "express statement of deliberate designation" would also apply to lectotype designations from before 2000. On the one hand this would make a great deal of previous lectotype designations invalid. On the other hand stability would only be threatened if a taxonomist would deliberately designate as lectotype a specimen belonging to a different taxon than the previous questionable lectotype. This occurs extremely rarely. It would be much easier for a revisor of a genus to expressly designate a commonly accepted but formally questionable lectotype as new, than to be forced to start a discussion on whether or not the lectotype was validly fixed under 74.6 or other conditions. It is extremely difficult to make a difference between an incorrectly recorded "lectotype" specimen as a result from a misinterpretation of a previous questionable record, and a deliberately new lectotype designation. Example: Zilch (1977) recorded types of collection material and mentioned "lectotype: specimen X" for taxon A and "lectotype (Pfeiffer 1956): specimen Y" for taxon B. Specimen Y was not validly designated as lectotype under the provisions of the 4th edition by Pfeiffer (1956), and Zilch's interpretation was incorrect. It is unclear what to do with specimen X in such a case. Evenhuis (2007, Bishop Museum Occasional Papers 95: 20) argued that unintentional lectotype fixation should not be recognized if mentioning of lectotype specimens was based on previous records or acts which later result to be invalid (problem of "lectotypification by accident"). I agree with this view.
,0 FranciscoWelterSchultes 2009-08-06 15:18:41 Art. 74.5 should contain an additional passage. A lectotype is not to be designated for curatorial reasons alone, and any such lectotype designation is invalid. This would be useful because the opportunity to designate lectotypes was abused by museum curators who designated lectotypes for curatorial purposes alone, simply because other museums also had lectotypes of the same taxon, to avoid that those could some day become name-bearing types, and that the own museum's types would loose name-bearing status. I do not see a major problem to take this measure. Any subsequent researcher can select either the same or another lectotype, but it usually would make no difference to have a name-bearing lectotype or syntypes. In most cases the syntypes belonged to the same species.