Is it mandatory to provide illustration for a valid publication?
According to ICN: Here and elsewhere in this Code, the term “illustration” designates a work of art or a photograph depicting a feature or features of an organism, e.g. a picture of a herbarium specimen or a scanning electron micrograph
Illustration is mostly not mandatory for valid publication of a name but see the following two articles:
43.2 A name of a new fossil-genus or lower ranked fossil-taxon published on or after 1 January 1912 is not validly published unless it is accompanied by an illustration or figure showing the essential characters or by a reference to a previously and effectively published such illustration or figure. For this purpose, in the case of a name of a fossil-genus or subdivision of a fossil-genus, citation of, or reference (direct or indirect) to, a name of a fossil-species validly published on or after 1 January 1912 will suffice.
44.2 A name of a new taxon of non-fossil algae of specific or lower rank published on or after 1 January 1958 is not validly published unless it is accompanied by an illustration or figure showing the distinctive morphological features, or by a reference to a previously and effectively published such illustration or figure.
Thank you Dr. Bandyopadhyay for the clarification. This means that if other rules are fulfilled, such as a diagnosis, description and designation of type and rules relating to effective publication, it is not mandatory to provide an illustration (line drawings, photograph of a herbarium specimen, electron micrographs, photomicrographs etc.) for validly publishing a new species of Angiosperm.
The question came to mind as because recently a reputed Indian Journal of Plant Taxonomy rejected my paper on the ground that I have not provided field photographs of the plants which I have studied and treated. I could not convince them that if such conditions are met with, it will take my lifetime for revising a single genus.
With the advent of digital photography, many authors are now including high quality photographs from field (sometimes without a scale) and as a result such a concept has evolved. It is very difficult for a herbarium botanist carrying out revisionary studies to go to field and take photographs of all the plants of the group he is revising. Here is the relevance of the line drawings which is being ignored by some reviewers.
Kind regards,
Tapas.
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