The lectotype for the Asian elephant, Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758 (Mammalia, Proboscidea) and comments on ‘primary, secondary and tertiary syntypes’ and ‘virtual lectotype designation’

摘要

Last November a group of colleagues and ourselves designated a lectotype for theudAsian elephant, Elephas maximus Linnaeus, 1758, having used morphology andudgenetic and proteomic sequencing to confirm that Linnaeus’s syntypes included bothudAsian and African elephants. The article was published (Cappellini et al., 2013)udonline in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, together with eight items ofudSupplementary Information, and appeared on paper in the ZJLS in January 2014.udThe paper and SI items are available online at DOI:10.1111/zoj.12084.udThe lectotype is a very nearly complete mounted skeleton on display in the NaturaludHistory Museum of the University of Florence. John Ray described the specimen inud1673 and 1693 and Linnaeus cited Ray’s 1693 publication. The lectotype designationudis available and valid. Dubois, Nemésio & Bour, however, have criticised our choiceudof selected specimen (published in Bionomina, June 2014; a preview is available onlineudat http://mapress.com/bionomina/content.htm). We are concerned because they haveuddemonstrated misunderstanding or ignorance of a number of aspects of theudInternational Code of Zoological Nomenclature