The Wells and Wellington affair was a dispute about the publication of three papers in the Australian Journal of Herpetology in 1983 and 1985. The periodical was established in 1981 as a peer-reviewed scientific journal focusing on the study of amphibians and reptiles (herpetology). Its first two issues were published under the editorship of Richard W. Wells, a first-year biology student at Australia's University of New England. Wells then ceased communicating with the journal's editorial board for two years before suddenly publishing three papers without peer review in the journal in 1983 and 1985. Coauthored by himself and high school teacher Cliff Ross Wellington, the papers reorganized the taxonomy of all of Australia's and New Zealand's amphibians and reptiles and proposed over 700 changes to the binomial nomenclature of the region's herpetofauna.
Members of the herpetological community reacted strongly to the pair's actions and eventually brought a case to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to suppress the scientific names they had proposed. After four years of arguments, the commission opted not to vote on the case because it hinged largely on taxonomic arguments rather than nomenclatural ones, leaving some of Wells and Wellington's names available. The case's outcome highlighted the vulnerability to the established rules of biological nomenclature that desktop publishing presented. As of 2020, 24 of the specific names assigned by Wells and Wellington remained valid senior synonyms.
Background and publication Australian Journal of Herpetology
The Australian Journal of Herpetology was a scientific journal specialising in herpetology. Its publisher, the Sydney-based Australian Herpetologists' League, was established to facilitate the journal's production. The journal's editorial board consisted of three Australian researchers: Harold Heatwole, an associate professor at the University of New England (UNE) in Armidale, New South Wales, Jeffrey Miller, also of UNE, and Max King of the Australian National University. Richard W. Wells, a first-year student pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in biology at UNE who had previously collected zoological specimens for several Australian museums, served as the journal's editor. Its editorial board refereed submitted manuscripts and, once accepted, sent them to Wells for publication. Because of Wells's enrolment at UNE, the Australian Journal of Herpetology was able to use a mailing address at the university.
In 1981, the Australian Herpetologists' League published the first and second issues of the first volume of the Australian Journal of Herpetology. They contained papers written both by professional and amateur researchers concerning a number of topics in Australian herpetology, including a description of a novel python species, "Python" bredli. The journal gained individual and institutional subscribers in Australia and abroad. Meanwhile, Wells did not complete his first year at UNE and moved to Sydney.
Wells and Wellington's papers For two years, the journal did not release any further issues. During this time, the editorial board continued to forward accepted manuscripts to Wells, who maintained his UNE address despite having left Armidale. Then, without the board's knowledge, a 56-page double issue consisting of a single article, "A Synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia" by Wells and Cliff Ross Wellington was published dated 31 December 1983. The paper reassessed the taxonomy of Australia's entire reptile class; in doing so, the pair named 33 novel genera and raised eight further genera from synonym status and established 214 additional species, either by elevating subspecies or resurrecting synonyms. The herpetologist Michael J. Tyler described the paper as including "more taxonomic changes [to Australia's herpetofauna] than had been proposed by all other authors in the previous decade". This issue of the journal listed Wells as the managing editor and Wellington as the advertising sales manager, a change from its prior two issues. Further, the journal stated that copyright was now held by Australian Biological Services, an entity which listed Wells's address for contact and payment.
A single-issue supplemental series to the Australian Journal of Herpetology was released in 1985, dated 1 March. At first, only spiralbound printouts of the issue were reported as being available although in September 1985, several professionally printed copies were distributed in Brisbane, effectively rendering the publication date 30 September 1985. The issue contained two articles, both again coauthored by Wells and Wellington. The first, "A Classification of the Amphibia and Reptilia of Australia", reassessed Australia's amphibians, naming at least 57 novel genera, resurrecting nine more from synonym status, naming 146 novel species, and resurrecting 110 from synonym status. The second, "A Synopsis of the Amphibia and Reptilia of New Zealand", offered a similar treatment to New Zealand's amphibian and reptile classes, naming four novel genera and elevating or describing six new species. Among other references, "A Classification of the Amphibia and Reptilia of Australia" cited over 500 alleged papers, some ostensibly nearly 100 pages long, written primarily by Wells in 1983 and 1984 in the unknown journal Australian Herpetologist. Neither Australian Herpetologist nor the hundreds of papers purportedly published therein were reported as having been available at any major Australian libraries or listed in the Australian Bibliographic Network as of 1985. The first article also referred to several specimens housed in the "Australian Zoological Museum" which was Wells's private collection.
Rationales and responses Initial reactions Upon the release of "A Synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia", all three members of the Australian Journal of Herpetologys editorial board resigned. The trio wrote letters to the editor of the Herpetological Review, a journal published by the international Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, to clarify that the Australian Journal of Herpetology was not affiliated with UNE past its second issue and that Wells and Wellington's papers had been self-published and had not undergone peer review. Heatwole also encouraged authors whose papers had been accepted for future issues to send their work elsewhere, as Wells was unresponsive to calls to return their manuscripts to them.
British paleontologist Tony Thulborn described reactions from professional herpetologists to the pair's actions as ranging "from disbelief to outrage". News of "A Synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia" and the fallout of its publication was reported throughout 1984 in several New South Wales newspapers, including the Illawarra Mercury, the Blue Mountains Gazette and The Sydney Morning Herald. The latter wrote that the events were "one of the most interesting scientific bun-fights in Australia's history".
Wells and Wellington's combined work put forth more than 700 changes to the binomial nomenclature of Australia's reptiles and amphibians, until this point believed to include around 900 species. Herpetologists asserted that the duo had described species without providing adequate diagnostic characteristics and established new taxa without identifying or examining type species. G. B. Monteith contended that the pair had named numerous species in trivial ways (including, for instance, naming a genus after Darth Vader), and wrote that although Wells and Wellington had given some taxa names honouring working herpetologists, many of those namesakes supported suppressing the duo's work. Gordon C. Grigg, president of the Australian Society of Herpetologists, and the evolutionary biologist and ecologist Richard Shine wrote in a letter to the Herpetological Review that "the effect of these [Wells and Wellington's] publications, if taken seriously, would be to destabilise permanently the nomenclature of the Australian herpetofauna." The letter was cosigned by over 150 other herpetologists. In September 1984, the Australian Society of Herpetologists elected to petition the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) to suppress all of the names proposed in the first of the pair's three papers, the only one published at that point.
Word spread outside the world of herpetology in 1985 when Monteith, an entomologist, reported on the affair in the Australian Entomological Society News Bulletin. Monteith's article, "Terrorist Tactics in Taxonomy", was subsequently republished in newsletters covering other fields of taxonomic study. The botanist Jan Frederik Veldkamp remarked that "this all may seem to be very funny, and it's happening to zoologists, anyway, but there is no reason to be so smug about this", continuing that plant nomenclature as governed by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature could be similarly susceptible to destabilization. In 1986, Thulborn reported on the situation in the international journal Nature.
Wells and Wellington's justifications Wells and Wellington, the latter a teacher at Blaxland High School, said that they did "years of research" before publishing their first paper. Wellington claimed in 1984 that their work was self-published due to a dispute with the Australian Museum, to which the pair had donated several specimens. Nonetheless, he said that the museum had prevented him and Wells from using its reptile collections for their research, further saying that,
Relative to other continents, Australia's herpetofauna had been subject to less in-depth research, primarily due to the continent's low population density, uneven population distribution, and high biodiversity. Monteith described the duo's justification for their papers as "a radical conservation ethic" and wrote that their intent appeared to be based on the belief that describing individual populations as distinct species would hasten efforts for their conservation. Wells and Wellington said in the introduction to their first paper that they hoped their work would be taken "not as anarchistic taxonomic vandalism, but as a decisive step intended to stir others into action". They intended to encourage others to generate research either to ratify their conclusions or counter them, either way putting out material to further understanding of reptile and amphibian life in the region.
ICZN case 2531 Binomial nomenclature, the widely used system of identifying distinct species through two-part Latin names, is related to and distinct from the study of taxonomy, the description and arrangement of these different taxa in relationship to one another. Changes to taxonomy, whether subject to peer review or not, are regarded as reliant on the discretion of subsequent researchers who may choose to incorporate them into or ignore them in future works on the basis of their scientific rigour and the evidence provided. Changes to zoological nomenclature, meanwhile, are governed by the ICZN's International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (the Code), of which a key component is the Principle of Priority: that "the valid name of a taxon is the oldest available name applied to it". Thus the publication of a new name, so long as it complies with Code requirements but regardless of the quality of the source in which it appears, establishes it as a name of record.