In 2018, a new species of centipede graced the pages of the prominent taxonomy journal
Zootaxa. More than 14 centimeters long, with striking teal-colored legs, it lives in the montane and mossy forests of the Philippines. Now, however, the centipede is in a harsh spotlight. The Philippine government says the Spanish neurologist and amateur biologist who described the species acquired his specimens illegally.
Neither the journal’s editors nor its peer reviewers caught the lapse and the journal has no policy requiring documentation that specimens have been collected with proper permits. Some editors tell
Science that should change. Others worry about hampering research when undescribed species are vanishing fast. And all agree that journals would struggle to enforce any such rules, given the wide variation in countries’ legal requirements. “There is simply no way for a journal to police this,” says Maarten Christenhusz, an independent botanist and editor-in-chief of the