Third time’s the charm: nomenclatural availability provided to the nomina of two Bornean Cyrtodactylus (Squamata, Gekkonidae)

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Davis et al. (2023a) published the descriptions of two new Bornean species of the highly speciose gekkonid genus Cyrtodactylus Gray, 1827 in the journal Zoologica Scripta. The descriptions themselves actually appeared in the online supplementary information to this paper as Appendix S1, accessible as a link under “Supporting Information” on the Wiley Online Library page associated with the paper’s DOI. Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs) for ZooBank registration entries for the new nomina were provided in this Appendix but were not given in the body of the main paper, which was published electronically on 1 February 2023. As noted by Davis et al. (2023b), however, the Appendix is a separate document from the main paper and it exists only in an editable Word format, not in a fixed PDF/A format, and as such, the conditions of Article 8.1.3.2 of the amended Code (Anonymous 2012), that nomenclatural acts be available as “widely accessible electronic copies with fixed content and layout”, were not met. Because of this lack of ZooBank registration in the online version of the paper, it cannot be considered as validly promulgated, nor can the nomina therein (Article 8, as amended in 2012). The subsequent publication of the print version of the manuscript in the May 2023 issue of Zoologica Scripta (actual date of publication not stated) did meet the criteria for the promulgation of the nomina C. kapitensis and C. hutan, but did not meet the requirement of Article 13.1.1 that “a new nomen published after 1930 must be accompanied by a description or definition that states in words characters that are purported to differentiate the taxon”, as the diagnostic and descriptive data supporting the recognition of these two taxa were present only in the ephemeral Appendix S1, leaving these nomina nomenclaturally unavailable. This situation is illustrative of some of the numerous previously identified problems with the inclusion of nomenclatural acts in online supplements (see also Dubois et al. 2013, 2022).