Pitfalls of describing new taxa in the age of on-line publications and how to get out of there

1 Department of Entomology, National Museum, Prague, Czechia 2 Biology Centre, Institute of Parasitology, Czech Academy of Sciences, České Budějovice, Czechia 3 Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, Czechia 4 Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia 5 Life Science Research Centre, Faculty of Science, University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czechia


Introduction
According to the basic principles of zoological nomenclature established by Linnaeus and later developed and finally codified in the form of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), any new name or nomenclatural act must be properly published in order to become available (ICZN, 1999). Until recently, publication almost exclusively implied printing multiple identical copies on paper by one of conventional methods. However, in the XXI century, electronic scientific journals became quite common and many of them earned high reputation. Therefore the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature issued an amendment of the current Code expanding the valid methods of publication and allowed edition by a method ensuring "widely accessible electronic copies with fixed content and layout" (ICZN, 2012a). Nevertheless, the Commission was not much confident in the durability and invariability of such content, and, for that reason, introduced a new Article 8.5, requiring registration in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature (ZooBank) with "evidence in the work itself that such registration has occurred" (ICZN, 2012a). Despite this amendment was published simultaneously in two leading taxonomic journals (ICZN, 2012a, b), it was unnoticed by many researchers. Moreover, over the past three decades articles in traditional printed journals became accessed predominantly via the Internet as electronic copies, therefore the transition to open access electroniconly journals became virtually seamless. All the above resulted in that some researchers, including the co-authors of this work, started publishing new nomenclatural acts in electronic journals being unaware of the invalidity of such acts according to the ICZN. This was further conditioned by the unawareness of reviewers and journal editors.
In this work, we want to attract the attention of the protistological community to this issue and validate some names and nomenclatural acts, published with the ignorance of the above rules. Here we summarize and discuss the requirements of the ICZN to be met for the availability of names and acts proposed after 2012 (ICZN, 1999(ICZN, , 2012a. In addition, we validate some taxonomic names and nomenclatural acts, which have been unavailable because of the above-mentioned mistakes, thereby providing a model of how this can be done.

Overview of availability criteria
In this section, we outline the current requirements of the ICZN. For convenience, we refer to the corresponding articles in its fourth edition (ICZN, 1999) or, in the case of the articles 8, 9, 10, 21 and78, to their versions amended in 2012 (ICZN, 2012a).
In order to be considered as published, works with new names and nomenclatural acts must be publicly obtainable after their issue either as electronic documents with fixed content and layout (e.g. PDF/A) or multiple copies printed on paper using ink or toner (articles 8.1.3 and 8.4.1). In the case of electronic publication, a work must contain information about the date when it was issued (article 8.5.2), be registered in the Official Register of Zoological Nomenclature -ZooBank (http://zoobank.org/) (article78.2.4), and contain a statement about this registration (articles 8.5.3). This can be done either by mentioning the date of this registration or by providing its unique LSID (Life Science Identifier) associated with the corresponding record in the Zoobank database (preferable). In addition to registering publications, authors are encouraged to do the same for the names and nomenclatural acts proposed within these publications, although this is not mandatory.
Every new name proposed either for a newly described taxon or a previously existing one (a new substitute name), must be explicitly indicated as new (article 16.1). The ICZN recommends to accompany new names at first appearance in the text with such expressions as "new family", "new genus", "new species", "new substitute name", or abbreviations like "fam. nov.", "gen. nov.", 'sp. nov.", and "nom. nov.", respectively (recommendation 16A). The explicit indication is also mandatory for nomenclatural acts: designation of a name-bearing type (e.g. "neotype, here designated") or a new synonym (syn. nov.), change of name status (stat. nov.), as well as actions of the first revising author. Any name proposed for a new taxon must be followed by a text (usually entitled as description or diagnosis) with information, allowing to distinguish this taxon from others, or a reference to a publication, where such information is available. The description must contain a name-bearing type designation (articles 13.3, 13.4). For speciesgroup taxa (species and subspecies), this is either a single specimen (holotype) or series of specimens (syntypes) (articles 73.1, 73.2). For protists it is more frequently a hapantotype (a special case of collective holotype) representing a series of directly related individuals (cells) either on a preparation or in a culture (article 73.3). It is also mandatory to indicate the name and location of the collection, where the name-bearing type(s) will be deposited (article 16.4). For genus-group taxa (genus and subgenus) a type species (ICZN, 1999: 13.3, 13.4) and family-group taxa (superfamily, family, subfamily, tribe, etc.) a type genus must be designated (article 16.2). If a new proposed name replaces a previous homonymous one for a taxon that existed before, its type is preserved automatically (article 13.1).
There are also rules on how new taxonomic names should be formed. In general, they must contain only letters of the Latin alphabet (at least two for species-and genus-group taxa) and be useable as words (i.e. pronounceable). A species-group name must be published in unambiguous combination with a generic name (article 11.9). For a genusgroup name, there is also a requirement for the word to be considered as a noun in the nominative singular (article 11.8). In order to avoid homonymy, it is recommended to check for the presence of the new proposed name in Nomenclator Zoologicus (http://www.ubio.org/NomenclatorZoologicus/), containing information about the zoological taxonomic names published in 1758-2004 as well as other taxonomic databases, which is best achieved with web search engines. It is also advisable to avoid homonymy with existing botanical and bacterial generic names. Names of the family-group taxa must be derived from the stem of the type genus name with the addition of the standard suffixes: -oidea for a superfamily, -idea for a family, -inae for a subfamily, -ini for a tribe, -ina for a subtribe (articles 11.7.1, 29).
Concerning nomenclatural acts, there are many special conditions to be satisfied especially for a designation of lectotype (articles 74.1, 74.7) or neotype (article 75), subsequent designations of type species (articles 69, 70), and actions of First Reviser (article 24.2). Although such acts are often subject to mistakes, given that they are published much less frequently and that a detailed explanation of all relevant requirements would be quite voluminous, we prefer to refer readers to the text of the abovelisted articles of the ICZN.

Nomenclatural section: the way out
Any author should be aware that all the criteria reviewed above must be fulfilled at the same time, i.e. in a single paper. Therefore supplying subsequently only the missing piece of information in form of an erratum is not sufficient to validate the name. Therefore when validating an unavailable taxon, it is mandatory to provide the following: (i) new name; (ii) indication that it is new (e.g. by sp. nov.); (iii) diagnosis or bibliographical reference to it; (iv) type designation; (v) type depository (in case of species). When publishing the validation paper in an online-only journal, ZooBank registration must be included.
The names and nomenclatural acts treated below were published in online-only journals without the required ZooBank registrations, therefore being unavailable for the purpose of zoological nomenclature (article 8.5.3), and are validated here. The authors of this paper act in this section mostly as editors of the text. The names and all required evidence are cited from the original publications with only minor corrections (by the authors) and therefore the original authorship of the validated names is respected. The authorship and publication year of the validated taxa should be afterwards cited as, e.g. Novymonas Kostygov et Yurchenko, 2020or Novymonas Kostygov et Yurchenko, 2020in Kment et al. (2020. Class Kinetoplastea Honigberg, 1963Order Trypanosomatida Kent, 1880Family Trypanosomatidae Doflein, 1901Genus Crithidia Léger, 1902 Crithidia thermophila Roitman, Mundim, de Azevedo et Kitajima, 1977, stat. nov Comments: Detailed justification of the taxonomic changes based on molecular evidence has been provided previously (Ishemgulova et al., 2017). The name Crithidia thermophila has priority over the name C. confusa (junior subjective synonym). Isolate ATCC 30818 (C. hutneri) and the aposymbiotic strain ATCC 30969 derived from ATCC 30255 culture (Angomonas deanei) also belong to this species. The original description of C. luciliae thermophila did not specify a hapantotype (Roitman et al., 1977), but according to the ICZN article 73. 1.2 (ICZN, 1999), this information may be unambiguously derived from the record associated with the culture ATCC 30817 in the ATCC database. Reliable species identification is not possible based on the original description (Roitman et al., 1977), but a detailed characterization was provided for C. confusa (Jirků et al., 2012). Léger, 1902= Crithidia luciliae (Strickland, 1911) Wallace et Clark, 1959 Comment: As judged by the analysis of molecular sequences, the type culture of C. luciliae ATCC 14765 does not differ from C. fasciculata (Ishemgulova et al., 2017) Genus Novymonas Kostygov et Yurchenko, gen. nov. Diagnosis: Monoxenous, genuine insect host unknown; promastigotes and choanomastigotes; the only known species bears multiple vacuole-enclosed β-proteobacterial cells in the cytoplasm. The full description has been published earlier (Kostygov et al., 2016).

Crithidia fasciculata
Etymology: The generic name honors Frederick George Novy, an American bacteriologist and parasitologist who pioneered studies of insect trypanosomatids. He was the first to document structures ("diplosomes") (Novy et al., 1907) that were later proved to be bacterial endosymbionts in Strigomonas culicis. The name also relates to the word nový ("new" in many Slavic languages), reflecting the novelty of the discovered trypanosomatidbacterium association (Kostygov et al., 2016). Gender neutral.
Etymology: The specific epithet borealis is a Latin adjective (boreālis) meaning "northern". It was selected to emphasise the presence of this species in northern European Russia (Ganyukova et al., 2020); adjective.
Type material: Giemsa-stained slide Pic3_16 (hapantotype) deposited in the research collection of Parasitic Protists of the Zoological Institute RAS (St. Petersburg, Russia) along with additional smears