Encyclopedia of life: should species description equal gene sequence? A reply

Abstract

As pointed out by Agosti in a recent letter in TREE [ 1 Agosti D Encyclopedia of life: should species description equal gene sequence?. Trends Ecol. Evol. 2003; 18: 273 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (10) Google Scholar ], images of Pheidole type specimens from Wilson's revision of the New World species of the ant genus Pheidole [ 2 Wilson E.O Pheidole in the New World: a Dominant, Hyperdiverse Ant Genus. Harvard University Press, 2003 Google Scholar ] on the Entomology Primary Type Specimen Database of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University were not previously available on the website (http://mcz-28168.oeb.Harvard.edu/mcztypedb.htm). However, there was not a commercial reason for this unavailability. Rather, the images were not included because the new species that they represent were manuscript names until the publication of the treatise in March 2003. With publication, the manuscript names became validly described species that could then be properly included in a type database. The updating of this database is now almost complete, and the images are now available to anyone with access to the web. Harvard University Press raised no objection to posting the Pheidole images on the website, and royalties from the Pheidole treatise are being donated to a fund that supports the MCZ Ant Collection. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the MCZ Entomology Primary Type Specimen Database has been the pioneering effort in digital taxonomy. Few, if any, institutions have matched the dedication and scope of the project, which now provides the taxonomic community with a complete database of >28 000 primary types of insect from the MCZ collection, along with >15 000 high quality images of the types. Recent funding received from the National Science Foundation ensures that imaging of the remainder of type specimens in the MCZ collection will soon be completed.