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

Multiple epidural haematomas after meningioma surgery

Intracranial meningioma removal carries a higher risk of post-operative haemorrhage compared with other intracranial neoplasm surgeries. We report a patient who developed three intracranial haematomas following a frontal meningioma removal.</

Endovascular treatment of carotid-cavernous vascular lesions

ABSTRACT Objective: to evaluate the endovascular treatment of vascular lesions of the cavernous segment of the internal carotidartery (ICA) performed at our institution. Methods: we conducted a descriptive, retrospective and prospective study of patients with aneurysms of the cavernous portion of the ICA or with direct carotid-cavernous fistulas (dCCF) undergoing endovascular treatment. Results: we included 26 patients with intracavernous aneurysms and ten with dCCF. All aneurysms were treated with ICA occlusion. Those with dCCF were treated with occlusion in seven cases and with selective fistula occlusion in the remaining three. There was improvement of pain and ocular proptosis in all patients with dCCF. In patients with intracavernous aneurysms, the incidence of retro-orbital pain fell from 84.6% to 30.8% after treatment. The endovascular treatment decreased the dysfunction of affected cranial nerves in both groups, especially the oculomotor one. Conclusion: the endovascular treatment significantly improved the symptoms in the patients studied, especially those related to pain and oculomotor nerve dysfunction