Nomenclatural type definitions are one of the most important concepts in biological nomenclature. Being physical objects that can be re-studied by other researchers, types permanently link taxonomy (an artificial agreement to classify biological diversity) with nomenclature (an artificial agreement to name biological diversity). Two proposals to amend the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), allowing DNA sequences alone (of any region and extent) to serve as types of taxon names for voucherless fungi (mainly putative taxa from environmental DNA sequences), have been submitted to be voted on at the 11th International Mycological Congress (Puerto Rico, July 2018). We consider various genetic processes affecting the distribution of alleles among taxa and find that alleles may not consistently and uniquely represent the species within which they are contained. Should the proposals be accepted, the meaning of nomenclatural types would change in a fundamental way from physical objects as sources of data to the data themselves. Such changes are conducive to irreproducible science, the potential typification on artefactual data, and massive creation of names with low information content, ultimately causing nomenclatural instability and unnecessary work for future researchers that would stall future explorations of fungal diversity. We conclude that the acceptance of DNA sequences alone as types of names of taxa, under the terms used in the current proposals, is unnecessary and would not solve the problem of naming putative taxa known only from DNA sequences in a scientifically defensible way. As an alternative, we highlight the use of formulas for naming putative taxa (candidate taxa) that do not require any modification of the ICN.

中文翻译：

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允许将DNA序列数据作为真菌类群类型的考虑因素和后果。

命名法类型定义是生物学命名法中最重要的概念之一。作为可以被其他研究人员重新研究的物理对象，类型将分类法（一种对生物多样性进行分类的人工协议）与命名法（一种对生物多样性进行命名的人工协议）永久地联系在一起。两项修改《藻类，真菌和植物国际命名法》（ICN）的提案，允许仅DNA序列（在任何区域和范围内）都可以用作无凭证真菌（主要是环境DNA序列的假定类群）的分类名称。 ，已提交在第十一届国际真菌学大会（波多黎各，2018年7月）上投票。我们考虑了影响等位基因在类群中分布的各种遗传过程，并发现等位基因可能无法始终如一地唯一地代表其中所包含的物种。如果提案被接受，命名类型的含义将从根本上改变，从作为数据源的物理对象到数据本身。这种变化有利于不可复制的科学，对人工数据的可能的典型化以及信息含量低的大量名称的创建，最终导致命名规则的不稳定性和对未来研究人员的不必要工作，这将阻止未来对真菌多样性的探索。我们得出结论，根据当前提案中使用的术语，仅将DNA序列作为分类单元名称的类型就可以接受，这是没有必要的，并且不会以科学上可行的方式解决仅从DNA序列中已知的假定分类单元的命名问题。作为替代方案，我们着重强调使用无需命名ICN进行任何修改的公式来命名假定的分类单元（候选分类单元）的方法。