Deposit of type material

[Fred Rickson]

On Wed, 9 Aug 1995, Jorge Soberon Mainero wrote:

> This morning the committee that is writing the new Mexican regulations
> for scientific collecting permits discussed a topic of interest to many of
> you, and I was asked to use TAXACOM to explore the opinions of foreign
> taxonomists. The point is an article of the law which in the proposal
> reads as follows:
>
> "In the case that the material collected in Mexico is used to describe
> new species, it will be necessary for the foreign scientist to deposit
> part of the type material in a Mexican collection with an infrastructure
> that guarantees its preservation and maintenance"
>
> We went for almost two hours over this point without reaching an
> agreement. For several of us the article expressed something which is a
> matter of principle. Oponents to the article, however, felt that it may
> cause unecessary concern among foreign taxonomists without improving what
> is almost a rule of cooperation between the main Mexican collections
> and their foreign counterparts.
>
> Your comments will be useful for our discussion.
>

Jorge,

In a perfect world it would really make no difference where types are
kept.  Travel problems aside, the specimen itself would be kept in perfect
condition forever.  To be honest, however, developing countries have a
terrible record for keeping collections in order.  A single
specimen....keep in the original country and hope for the best (its the
correct thing to do)....if two or more are available, one *must* go to a
world class collection with the resources and desire to maintain the
specimen for all to use.  And, I do not mean a local collection in any
developed country....I mean a national collection if possible.

Fred Rickson
Corvallis, Oregon