Commentaries on Gentile & Snell (2009): an introduction

Abstract

In this volume of Zootaxa, Gentile and Snell (2009) describe a new species of terrestrial iguana from the Galápagos Islands. The extreme geographical localization and the very small estimated size of the only known population of the new species are regarded by the authors as incompatible with the killing of a specimen to be fixed as the holotype to be preserved as a museum specimen. As an alternative, they have marked a ‘living holotype’ with a Passive Integrated Transponder and chosen to document its existence and its diagnostic traits, pending the specimen’s natural death and eventual preservation, by providing information on molecular characters, specimen external description and measurements, photos and video recording.