Andrew Dickson asks,
'When a new molluscan species is described a single holotype is designated.
 Why are certain holotypes sent to certain places?  What type of
organizations are allowed to retain holotypes?'

The ICZN recommends that all type specimens be housed 'in a museum or
similar institution where it will be safely preserved and will be
accessible for purposes of research'. For neotypes (replacements for lost
holotypes), this is required. After 250 years of trying to hunt down lost
or unlabeled type specimens that the author just HAD to keep, biologists
are fed up with private ownership of the name-bearers of species. Museums
sometimes lose type specimens too, but not as often. As long-lasting public
institutions, museum collections tend to survive death, economic downturns,
war, and other disasters far better than private collections do.

The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is a voluntary set
of rules. Like the rules of baseball, though, if you don't follow them then
no one will want to play with you. Editors of reputable journals usually
reject articles that state that the type specimen of a new species is to be
held in private hands. Taxonomists sometimes refuse to report on specimens
in private collections, since their words will not be backed up by a
publicly available collection. And so on.

What types of institutions? Well, the ICZN left that part purposefully
broad, but I would venture to say that most type specimens are held in the
natural history museums or other collections of nations, states/provinces,
cities, universities, academies of science, federal and state agencies, and
so on. Some museums are owned privately but act like public institutions,
such as the American Museum of Natural History. A great number of the
holotypes that were in private collections during the nineteenth century
have ended up in public collections, mostly by donation. Some are still in
private hands, and many are lost -- some simply because they were never
labeled as types.

As to why certain holotypes are sent to certain places, generally it is a
good idea to keep a specimen in a collection with others of its kind. The
California Academy of Sciences has a great California collection, the
Bishop Museum focuses on the Pacific region, and so on. Some collections
are rich in, say, cones, and it is more convenient to visit one collection
with twenty cones than twenty collections with one cone. Also, some
collections have facilities to store specimens in alcohol, and others do
not. And often a specimen is sent to a museum because they have a curator
who is interested in that group of mollusks.

To the collector, it may seem unreasonable that a prized specimen, the
first of its species to be discovered, should be given away to a museum. I
hope I've explained the other side of the story. Often, the consolation
prize is to name the new species for the discoverer, making the collector
as unique as the holotype.

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama
'Eleventh Hour Enterprises'