Taxacom: museum access

[John Grehan]

One of the vivotal foundations of taxonomy is the ability to verify or
falsify based on voucher material. I understand that this condition is what
establishes taxonomy as a science. Naturally access to specimens is not
always feasible, but in principle is available given sufficient resources
(e.g. to travel to a collection). One ehars occasionally of direct
examination being denied, perhaps in some cases justified, others perhaps
not. So it came to my attention in a 2014 paper "Life-history evolution and
mitogenomic phylogeny of caecilian
 amphibians" published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 73 (2014)
177?189 (accessed at   Life_history_evolution_and_mitogenomic_p.pdf ) the
following statement:

"Both specimens of Gymnopis included in this study (MVZ 171331 and MVZ
179536) are listed as G. multiplicata in the catalogue of the Museum of
Vertebrate Zoology (University of California, Berkeley, USA) where they are
deposited. We were denied access to, and thus unable to examine, the
vouchers to re-evaluate their taxonomic assignment.

This was 10 years ago, but wonder if anyone has insight to this? Just
curious.

John Grehan

-- 
https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhepialidsoftheworld.com.au%2F&data%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cbe74ff4d17bc43e4be5d08dd7c6da23b%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638803532501418479%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=LSIgNV77XtP%2BxlEU9Vc1P1DBKuiZaNbmNQImzgGwM3Q%3D&reserved=0 (use the 'visit archived web site'
link, then the 'Ghost Moth Research page' link.