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Online database to catalogue animal life
24 September 2005
From New Scientist Print Edition.
Emma Young

Of the 15,000 to 20,000 new animal species named every year only a fraction grab headlines. Most languish in obscure journals or private publications, which delays widespread recognition of their status and slows research. A planned global online registration system called ZooBank could help combat this, and new guidelines should clear up the misconception that you can't register a new species without a dead specimen.

The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), which regulates the naming of new species, thinks ZooBank could also help stop fraudulent researchers registering bogus species. The system is to go online in voluntary form this week. But even among scrupulous researchers there is widespread confusion about the requirements for naming new species. "There is an apparent discrepancy in the current code," concedes Andrew Polaszek, executive secretary of the ICZN, based at the Natural History Museum in London, "It's very open to interpretation, and people do need clearer guidelines."

At the heart of the confusion is the idea that you need to possess a dead or captive specimen when describing a new species. This isn't the case - a DNA sample or even an illustration will do, Polaszek stresses. At best, the misconception is likely to be hampering descriptions of rare new species. At worst, it could encourage researchers to collect suspected new species from the wild and even kill them for cataloguing.

Last month, Anindya Sinha of the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, India, and his colleagues described a new species of macaque, Macaca munzala, in the International Journal of Primatology. But at first the team were told by some experts they could not describe the macaque without a dead specimen. "We were positively delighted to learn this was not the case. We were absolutely against the idea of going out and procuring a dead specimen, on ethical grounds," says Sinha. "Yet only last month, I became involved in a heated argument with an Indian government zoologist who absolutely refused to believe that a dead specimen was not required for a valid description," he says.

Meanwhile in May, a description of a new species of mangabey found in southern Tanzania - the first new African monkey in 20 years - was published in Science. "When it was being described, the team asked me and a few other people if they needed a dead type specimen. We said yes, I'm afraid you do, and we could hear the cries of despair coming to us from Africa," says Colin Groves, a leading mammalogist at the Australian National University in Canberra. The ICZN later confirmed that a dead specimen was not necessary.

Nonetheless, a group of eminent mammalogists has written a letter of complaint to Science, claiming that the mangabey description is not valid without an actual specimen. That letter, and a clarification of the code from Groves and others, are soon to be published.

But if dead specimens are not required, it potentially becomes easier for unscrupulous researchers to fake a new species, for instance, with a digitally forged photograph. There is significant financial motivation. In April this year, an internet casino paid $650,000 for the right to name a genuine new species of titi monkey. These funds will go to help manage the national park in Bolivia where this species lives. "But the potential is there for people to fake new species, and to make money by doing so," says Polaszek.

Polaszek believes the ZooBank proposal outlined in Nature (vol 437, p 477) could help reduce that risk. Users would be able to sign up for email alerts that would notify them of any additions or changes to the taxonomy of a particular group, immediately bringing suspect reports to the attention of the relevant specialists.

Groves is not so sure. "We really have to rely on the honesty of our colleagues. A clever digital fake would be hard to detect in any system." But Polaszek hopes ZooBank will become the mandatory repository for descriptions of new species under the ICZN's new code. Fittingly enough it is due out in 2008, the 250th anniversary of Carolus Linnaeus's binomial classification system.

From issue 2518 of New Scientist magazine, 24 September 2005, page 16

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