Summary. Changes to the scientific name of a bacterial taxon can entail a variety of problems and require considerable time and effort to implement. While these name changes are typically prompted by re-classifications of a bacterial species or genus, there is rarely a formal requirement to adopt them. Widely used public databases such as GenBank, ENA and DDBJ should therefore avoid changing by default an established prokaryotic name to its last validly published name for existing records. Instead, we recommend a more cautious approach, such as using the List of Recommended Names for bacteria of medical importance. This would greatly reduce the burden on users of said databases, practitioners and other stakeholders who use prokaryotic names in fields such as human and veterinary medicine, and the associated risks of confusion and communication failure.

(2 min read.) Changes to the names of bacteria can have serious and wide-reaching consequences in fields such as human and veterinary medicine. To address this issue, the Ad Hoc Committee on Mitigating Changes in Prokaryotic Nomenclature was formed by a group of medical and veterinary researchers, practitioners and taxonomic nomenclature experts, under the auspices of the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes (ICSP). The ICSP establishes the rules for naming prokaryotes, cultivated and uncultivated, as set out in the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes (ICNP). The Ad Hoc Committee first noted that, even if new names for established taxa are proposed under the ICNP, this only rarely makes a subsequent name change mandatory under that code.

Changing the names of prokaryotes can have high impact well beyond the need to learn the new names and understand their synonymy. Laboratory standard operating procedures, laboratory informatics systems, and microbiology courses also need to be adapted. Name changes can also have formal consequences, such as legal requirements or regulations based on the (former) name for a taxon but not listing the more recent name. Examples include national risk group classifications, performance standards for antimicrobial susceptibility testing such as those issued by the CLSI and the EUCAST, regulatory requirements for diagnostics and therapeutics, and industry standards including pharmacopoeias.

This raises the question on the importance, the urgency and the significance for a proposed name change in each case. The Ad Hoc Committee developed objective and universal criteria for addressing this question and subsequently implemented the List of Recommended Names for bacteria of medical importance. These criteria eliminate changes of uncertain taxonomic benefit and defer taxonomically sensible but practically disadvantageous changes, creating a grace period for adaptation. This regularly updated list provides an unambiguous language for all stakeholders and is a viable alternative to by default adopting the latest validly published synonym as the name applied to a taxon.

As signatories of this petition (by the Ad Hoc Committee), we therefore plead organizations providing public databases such as GenBank, ENA and DDBJ to review and adapt their policies and instead implement a more cautious approach to this sensitive matter.