[Taxacom] Question about labelling types

[Karl Magnacca]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 18:41:29, Geoffrey Read wrote:
> Maybe I'm too cynical, but strange things can happen in one hundred
> years of storage in a museum.

Nope, they do indeed.  According to the insect curators at the NHM,
the ones bearing "Holotype" labels among syntype series are merely
those moved to a safe off-site location during WWII.  And it is
relevant even if you could say "all things are equal".  E.g., for
one of the groups I work on, the species "molokaiensis" has seven
specimens representing five species in the syntype series, but only
one is actually from Molokai.  Using one of the others as the
lectotype simply because it has a post-hoc holotype label would be
ridiculous.

Karl