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COLECTOMY SUCCESSFUL, BUT NOMINA SEQUENTIA MARK TIME The colon (:) expunged from the ICN!
After 37 years, the recommendation to use a colon (:) to indicate the sanctioned status of fungal names has been removed from the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN; Turland et al. 2018). This has been a lengthy procedure, but the operation was completed successfully on 19 July 2018 by a 67 % vote in favour during the Nomenclature Session of the XIth International Mycological Congress (IMC11) in Puerto Rico, and that this decision came into effect when ratified by the Plenary Session of the Congress on 21 July 2018 (May et al. 2018). The tortuous history of the colon is summarized in Box 1. The hottest issue before this first-ever formal Nomenclature Session meeting was what to do about the naming of fungal taxa which were only known from DNA sequences, and especially from environmental samples. There were wideranging debates but no changes to the ICN with respect to fungal sequences were made. It was, however, agreed to establish a Special-purpose Committee on “DNA Sequences as Types for Fungi” charged with reporting to IMC12 in 2022. It is to be hoped that appropriate changes to the ICN can be made at that time, but in the meantime, any names of fungi based only on DNA sequences will continue to be treated as not validly published. If such names introduced in the interim comply with other criteria for valid publication and are registered and allocated an identifier by one of the three approved repositories (i.e. Fungal Names, Index Fungorum or MycoBank), they could be used and their invalid status indicated by adding “nom. seq.” (nomen sequentium) in the formal citation. This would parallel the use of established annotations such as “nom.
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Some of the participants in the IMC11 Nomenclature Session.
illegit.”, “non. inval.”, “nom. nud.”, and “nom. prov.” to indicate the nomenclatural status of the name. With the speed with which molecular investigations of environmental samples are proceeding today, it is to be hoped that it will not take the 37 years to 2055 to resolve this issue! The suggestion that decision-making on matters solely concerning the nomenclature of fungi should be transferred from International Botanical to International Mycological Congresses, had been supported by 86 % of those completing a questionnaire at IMC9 in Edinburgh in 2010 (Norvell et al. 2010), and by 93.6 % of those answering this same question at IMC10 in Bangkok in 2014 (Redhead et al. 2014). This vision became a reality when this move was approved by the International Botanical Congress in Shenzen last year (Hawksworth 2017, Hawksworth et al. 2017). It was gratifying to see how smoothly the first formal decisionmaking Nomenclature Session went, and the participation of so many mycologists in the process, either through the guiding e-mail vote or participating in the Session. This augers well for the future of fungal nomenclature. Full information on the changes to the nomenclatural rules f
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