Search

The following is a list of the validly published names and correct citations for subfamilial categories of the family Compositae. This effort is offered as a contribution toward nomenclatural stabilization within the family, although it introduces some inevitable changes in the presently accepted names. The genera and subtribal divisions of Compositae are in need of taxonomic revision, and there is at present intensive work in this area being done in many laboratories. It is hoped that this list will be of some use in connection with this work.

Neither a dead, dried specimen nor a drawing of a single heterothallic strain of a yeast is acceptable as the type for a species because morphology of vegetative cells is not sufficiently definitive. The zymologist must have a living type from which the more persistent and definitive physiological reactions may be determined. Of course, the best specimens are live preparations of both sexes, lyophilized soon after isolation from nature while they are still in a strongly reactive sexual state. Designation of a single mating strain as the type for a heterothallic haploid species is distasteful to me, because only half the complete sexual unit is represented by it; obviously, mating strains of both sexes comprise the complete sexual unit. Sex is and should be the principal bulwark of phylogeny and taxonomy; why should we go half way, either as a phycomycetologist or as a zymologist, toward selecting a sexual unit for a type? If two opposite sexes are designated as the type of the perfect state, then the type for the corresponding imperfect state may be either one of the two opposite sexes, possibly bearing the same species name to suggest the identity of the perfect and imperfect forms; or, to state it more accurately, to record that the imperfect form is part of the perfect form. I suggest that a recommendation be added to Article 59 which would read, "the type specimen of a heterothallic haploid species of yeast shall consist of two strains of opposite sex. One of them may be the type of the corresponding imperfect state".