validity of taxonomic publication

[Wolfgang Wuster]

On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, Peter Schuchert wrote:

> Is a PhD thesis a valid taxonomic publication (for animals)?
> I would say it is not, but other collegues disagree.
> The case is a PhD thesis with a faunistic survey, including
> descriptions of new species. It is written in German and some
> copies of the thesis are deposited in some German libraries.

An unpublished PhD thesis is not a valid publication.  Article 9(11) of
the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature specifically excludes
"deposit of a document (e.g., a thesis) in a collection of documents, a
library, or other archive".

Hope this helps.
--
Wolfgang Wuster
School of Biological Sciences, University of Wales, Bangor, UK
e-mail: w.wuster at bangor.ac.uk   WWW: http://oracle.bangor.ac.uk/sbs/