UNCULTIVATED MICROBES - IN NEED OF THEIR OWN NOMENCLATURE?

Nomenclature of prokaryotes up to the rank of class is regulated by the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes, published by the International Committee on Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (ICSP). A proposal to include the rank of phylum is pending (Oren et al., IJSEM 65: 4284-4287, 2015). The Code deals with nomenclature of cultivated prokaryotes only. "Modest proposals to expand the type material for naming of prokaryotes" (Whitman, IJSEM 66: 2108-2112, 2016) have been made to unite the nomenclature of cultivated and uncultivated prokaryotes into a single system. It is yet unclear whether these "modest proposals" will be accepted, but they have one great merit: all is done within the framework of the ICSP and the Prokaryotic Code. Recently, Konstantinidis et al. (ISME J. 11: 2399-2406, 2017) proposed implementation of an independent nomenclatural system for uncultivated taxa, following the same nomenclature rules as for cultured Bacteria and Archaea but with its own list of validly published names. As explained in a commentary to the Konstantinidis et al. paper (Oren and Garrity, ISME J. 12: 309-311, 2018), the proposal of creating independent nomenclature systems is highly problematic. For the nomenclature of the prokaryotes, cultivated as well as uncultivated, we must choose between order to be established by the ICSP (without involvement of another international microbiological society to regulate nomenclature of uncultivated taxa as proposed by Konstantinidis et al.) or pluralism that will lead to chaos and to the destruction of the now well-ordered nomenclature system. Konstantinidis et al. also propose to establish an official classification of the uncultured taxa. It must be stressed that for cultivated taxa no such an `official` classification exists. The Prokaryotic Code deals with nomenclature only, and its Principle 1.4 states: "Nothing in this Code may be construed to restrict the freedom of taxonomic thought or action".