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How do we treat species listed as cf. "something"? Do we use the name it is associated with for things like authorship & type localities, or do we treat it like an undescribed species?

Firstly I would say that I would prefer that priority be given to "cleanly" identified species. A rule that I shall break with L-numbers but if I don't tackle l-numbers I don't tackle a sizeable percentage of the cat-elog.

In answer to the question, I think we should treat cf. as undescribed.

My reasons are primarily to avoid confusion but also to allow things like searches on species described by people in the future. This is open for debate, but this is my mind at the moment. The "Notes on ID" section for and cf. and indeed aff. species MUST explain why it is considered as such and not as the species itself. This would also be helpful in sp. cf. cases but these should (hopefully) be a bit more self evident.

Jools

A lot of fishes that lots of us have experience with are "cf. species", Synodontis cf. petricola "dwarf" and Pseudomystus cf. stenomus, as just two examples that come to mind. These are undescribed species in terms of authorship and type locality, but well described in other respects, including husbandry.

I agree with Jools that it would be very useful and interesting to explain why these are cf. X and not X.

Dinyar

Dinyar wrote:I agree with Jools that it would be very useful and interesting to explain why these are cf. X and not X.

I would go further than this and say that if we do not state this I will tend to get the odd email (or more if it's a pleco) asking me why. Often you settle on an id after a good deal of research and writing down the reason(s) why you came to the ID you didi is a good sanity check as well as a good aid memoir.

Jools