[Taxacom] Taxonomy and GMOs

[dipteryx at freeler.nl]

Van: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu namens Ashley Nicholas
Verzonden: vr 6-11-2009 15:10

> Dear Taxacomers,
 
> I dread to open this Pandora's box but I have recently been approached
> for advice by someone drawing up legislation about the naming of GMOs.
> If a GMO becomes reproductively isolated from its parent species (but
> can reproduce with itself) does it not become a new species that now
> needs to be named and described? If so does someone doing this then
> follow the respective Codes of Nomenclature or do special procedures 
> and naming practices need to be followed? Do we treat them the same 
> as 'normal' species (whatever that means!) or do they deserve to be
> treated differently as we do for horticultural plants - in which
> cultivars need to be registered? I have been unable to find any
> published literature on this and could find nothing in the ICBN 
> Vienna code.  A colleague also tells me the Horticultural Code does
> not deal with this matter either.
 
> This not only has implications for taxonomy and classification, but
> also for the new Phylocode - how is it going to place and 
> contextualise these GMO species which can involve lateral gene
> transfer from very unrelated organisms? I try to convince myself 
> that I should not be too shocked by all this given that nature has
> been creating GMOs for billions of years. 
 
> Any advice and published references would be gratefully appreciated.
> Ashley Nicholas
 
***
>From a nomenclatural point of view this is not very interesting. 
Anybody who wants to name a GMO has a number of options, and for
each of these options there is a prescribed procedure. 

What kind of name wil be used could be a matter of taxonomy, and 
there are any number of cases where an organism shifted from one
position to the next because of a change in taxonomic perspective 
(a species becoming a hybrid species, a species becoming a cultivar, 
a species becoming a cultivar Group, etc). However, presumably, 
a GMO won't be named either by the ICBN or by the ICNCP, but rather 
in a manner which will offer it some legal protection, to guard over 
its economic prospects.

I hope this helps,

Paul van Rijckevorsel