[Taxacom] Question about labelling types

[John Grehan]

I get the impression that there is no conflict other than how frequent one
or other situation might be. All other things being equal it might be
considered the best option to use a previously labeled specimen. Perhaps in
most cases all things are not equal, but whether nor not in most cases or
not does not matter. So I don't see any straw men from either point of view.

John Grehan

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 6:36 PM, Karl Magnacca <kmagnacca at wesleyan.edu>
wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Feb 2016, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> > There is no "logical flaw" in what I said! A typical scenario
> > involves two or three syntypes all from the same locality, same sex
> > and same condition (i.e. all other things are equal). If one of
> > these has an (invalid) holotype label on it, then that one should be
> > designated as lectotype. Otherwise, it may cause confusion (and
> > museums typically treat anything with a holotype label on it as if
> > it were a valid primary type, someone may have already published on
> > it as if it were the valid primary type, and it is very bad practice
> > to remove labels). Why are people trying hard to resist this simple
> > piece of commonsense??
>
> Because *this* is a strawman.  What you're talking about is not a
> typical situation but an ideal one, where in fact there's no need
> (or even ability) to designate a lectotype at all.  Even if you have
> one misidentified specimen in the type series such that it requires
> a lectotype, 80+ year old specimens are almost never in equally good
> condition, usually not the same sex, and often not from the same
> locality.  You can't make a general rule from a very specific
> situation and then claim that the ones that are seen more frequently
> are the exceptions.
>
> Karl
>
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