Open letter to the scientific community of mycologists

To help minimise invalid publication of newly proposed scientific names of fungi, Korf (1995) provided advice on how to guarantee valid publication, and offered a few simple guidelines for authors, reviewers, and editors. He regretted that “unfortunately many of the errors are committed by highly respected mycologists, and published in thoroughly respectable journals” and emphasised that “although the ultimate responsibility for publishing correct names lies with authors, clearly reviewers and editors are shirking their duties to advise authors of such errors prior to publication.” To be published validly, names must be introduced according to requirements of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (Greuter et al. 1994, 2000). Since 1990, it has been compulsory to deposit the vouchers for new species and infraspecific taxa, the name-bearing types, in an herbarium or other collection. It is generally accepted that such voucher specimens should be deposited in publicly accessible reference collections such as herbaria. However, voucher collections are invariably necessary, not only when new fungi are described, but also in connection with any scientific study, whether by taxonomists, systematists, physiologists, chemists, molecular biologists, pathologists, ecologists, clinicians, etc., dealing with organisms. It is essential to preserve voucher specimens as dried material and, where possible, as permanently preserved living cultures. When none of the investigated material is preserved, it is impossible to confirm the identity of the investigated taxa. If species concepts change, it is particularly crucial to be able to re-identify the organism at a later time. There are several examples of entities once thought to be species but now revealed as species complexes, i.e., the species concept has been changed, including Pisolithus tinctorius (Burgess et al. 1995) and Paxillus involutus (Fries 1985; Hahn and Agerer 1999). In such cases, re-identification of the original material is necessary to know which organism was studied so that previous work will continue to be relevant. In recent years, molecular biological studies have had a tremendous impact on systematics, taxonomy, and ecology. DNA sequences are frequently obtained from fungal cultures. Too often there is no reference to either an exact citation of the

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