Plethodon longicrus

Number of Pages: 1Place of Publication: Kensington, MarylandIntegrative BiologyGeological Science

Egg-Laying in the Spotted Turtle, Clemmys Guttata (Schneider)

Author Institution: 2370 Club Road, Columbus 21, Ohi

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016

The salamanders of Guerrero, Mexico, with descriptions of five new species of Pseudoeurycea (Caudata: Plethodontidae)

Volume: 177Start Page: 1End Page: 2

The Development of Systematic Reviews of the Turtles of the World

Turtles are one of nature's most immediately recognizable life forms. They are an ancient group of vertebrateswith a rich fossil history whose natural limits have long been recognized by naturalists. Indeed, the monophylyof this order has never been seriously questioned. The use of turtles and their eggs as food and for medicinaland ceremonial purposes has made them of importance to mankind since prehistoric times. As such, cheloniansfigured prominently in the earliest museum collections, all of them privately owned, including that of the Ital-ian physician and encyclopedist of nature, Ulisse Aldrovandi of Bologna, in the late 16th century and the collec-tions amassed in Amsterdam by the wealthy pharmacist and amateur naturalist, Albertus Seba, early in the 18thcentury. The first books devoted exclusively to turtles were on their anatomy. Giovanni Caldesi, physician tothe last grand duke of Tuscany, and Christoph Gottwald, a physician and collector of natural history curiositiesin Danzig, published their treatises on chelonian morphology in 1687 and 1781, respectively, the latter beingissued eight decades after Gottwald's death. Neither author, however, provided a comprehensive review of theworld's turtles