[Taxacom] Taxonomy and GMOs

[Arthur Chapman]

Surely these would come under the International Code of Nomenclature of Cultivated Plants - similarly to garden hybrid and crop hybrids do currently

http://www.ishs.org/sci/icracpco.htm


If they don't fit perfectly, then it is perhaps that Code that needs modifying

Cheers

Arthur D. Chapman
Toowoomba
Australia

>---------------
>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