I am frustrated when a holotype is generally accepted by the shell community
to be a juvenile specimen, or is very dead collected (especially when good,
live-taken examples come from the same dredge as the faded, dead shell that
was designated as the holotype).  I wish there were some way to have a
consensus-based evaluation of holotypes that, after acquiring more knowledge
about the described species, could have other specimens selected from the
type locality that could also serve as the current representation of that
species.  I do realize that in many cases this would be very problematic and
not at all practical, however there are some instances where I think this
makes sense.  For example, Conus "abrolhosensis" is now commonly accepted to
be a juvenile of the later named Conus bertarollae - I have been told that
even the author accepts this. I use bertarollae because, although a junior
synonym, the type is mature enough to easily guide identification of this
conus population, where as abrolhosensis has not, to my knowledge, been
formally revisited and compared with bertarollae in any publication.

Just sharing thoughts,
Andre Poremski

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