Rules have reasons: response to Greay et al. (2019)
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Parasites & Vectors Open Access
Rules have reasons: response to Greay et al. (2019) D. James Harris1,2*
Abstract Recently Greay et al. (Parasit Vectors 11:197, 2018) described several new Apicomplexa parasites from domestic com‑ panion animals in Australia. Harris (Parasit Vectors 12;172, 2019) highlighted that these descriptions did not conform to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) rules. Despite Harris (2019) clearly noting “molecular characters can be used to satisfy article 13.1.1 of the code”, in a reply Greay et al. (Parasit Vectors 12:178, 2019) incor‑ rectly state “Harris considers the eight new species…invalid on the basis that only molecular characters were pro‑ vided”. This was not the case. The ICZN has strict rules regarding species descriptions for good reasons. Here I reiterate why the forms described by Greay et al. (2018) are not valid. Keywords: Babesia, Theileria, Hepatozoon, Companion animals, Ticks Letter to the Editor Greay et al. [1] described eight novel Apicomplexan species from ticks taken from pets in Australia, based on 18S rDNA sequence data. Harris [2] reported that these did not conform to International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) rules, in that new names must be accompanied by a description or definition stating in words the characters that differentiate them. Greay et al. [3] counter with several points. First, they note that codes and committees governing the nomenclature of viral and microorganisms have “largely adopted the use of sequence data to describe novel species”. This may be correct, but is irrelevant since protozoan classification falls under ICZN rules. Next they state that criticisms of DNA-based species descriptions have been refuted, and I essentially agree; however, this is not a discussion regarding systematic approaches but a determination of whether ICZN rules have been applied or not. Greay et al. [3] then propose that the text “see above”, which *Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO), InBIO Laboratório Associado, Universidade do Porto, Campus Agrário de Vairão, 4485‑661 Vairão, Portugal Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
refers to the GenBank Accession numbers is sufficient to comply with the rules, and that the defined characters are the 18S rDNA sequences. They further note that journals have no standardized format for sequence descriptions, and that while some authors report specific nucleotide polymorphisms, this would be “unsuitable for large datasets (especially genomes)”. These arguments are, however, fallacious. Journal formatting, or dataset sizes, are irrelevant in cases of new species descriptions—the only issue is if ICZN rules were followed. 18S rDNA sequences are not characters, but suites of characters—the characters are individual nucleotide positions. In a similar fashion, a morphological diagram cannot alone be used to describe a new species, even if it encompasses all the key featu
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