Paratypes for sale.

[wollastoni]

A lot of paratypes are often sold on ebay. Do you consider it is a good thing ?

Of course, it's a rare pleasure for a collector to possess a paratype but this business may increase descriptions of useless subspecies for commercial reason.

I am not sure what to think...

As you can see there are a lot of paratypes currently for sale on ebay including a wonderful Papilio ascolius sarapiqui female:

rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=9&pub=5575041726&toolid=10001&campid=5337260953&customid=&icep_uq=paratype&icep_sellerId=&icep_ex_kw=&icep_sortBy=12&icep_catId=1335&icep_minPrice=&icep_maxPrice=&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg

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[nomihoudai]

It depends on what people do with it.

For a young researcher that has not proven yet his capability and usefulness for the field it can be a nice way to acquire a few paratypes trough monetary exchange. It safes time as one does not have to travel to the museum that house them and one can examine characters at any given time.

So if you are willing to make a small fraction of the paratype series available to interested persons this is fine in my POV as it enables to broaden research. Of course the best way is to refrain from money and use donation or trade, but I can very well understand that researchers are not giving them away for free to anybody that they do not know well yet.

The whole thing changes when there is things involved like eBay which is for commercial reasons only.

It can go as far as fake paratypes where people copied the original labels. Last year I came across such a specimen, the label was probably a printout of the original paper where a closeup pic of the label had been shown. The specimen that the label was attached to didn't even belong to the correct subspecies as it didn't show any of the key characteristics. The labels got destroyed afterwards to stop further fraud.

I do have a few paratypes in my growing research collection, I acquired them for values between 5€ and 25€, at this price the reason surely can't be commercial, it rather is a symbolic value of not giving them completely for free.

So if you and your customers are drooling about neat red labels then better switch to stamp collections where you don't harm biological research. If the spread of the paratypes does stimulate further research then there is nothing one could say about offering a few.

[Adam Cotton]

Paratypes are only really scientifically useful in the event that the holotype is lost or destroyed. It is recommended that a neotype should be designated by chosing a paratype if there are extant specimens available. However, there is no guarantee that paratypes do actually belong to the same taxon as the name-bearing holotype, although most modern paratypes generally are.

I don't think that anyone who buys or sells paratypes actually "harms biological research".

Adam.

[nomihoudai]

Paratypes are only really scientifically useful in the event that the holotype is lost or destroyed.

I would refer to this as nomenclatural problem. Scientifically they are of interest by presenting what exactly the author understood under the name he published (although the name itself is tied to the holotype of course). Many problems arose when people tried to make paratype series from many places or try to show intraspecific variation.

[nomihoudai]

...but yeah, I guess in the end you are right as it is better to take a look at the species in the field anyway