Cryptic diversity does not justify weakening systematics standards. A comment on: ‘Adapting practices to accelerate the scientific description of invertebrate cryptic species’, (2025) by Vivien et al.

Vivien R, Martin P, Pawlowski J, Alther R. 2025 Adapting practices to accelerate the scientific description of invertebrate cryptic species. Biol. Lett. 21, 20250385. (doi:10.1098/rsbl.2025.0385) propose accelerating the formal description of cryptic invertebrate species by relaxing long-standing evidentiary requirements, including the type concept. While motivated by a desire for efficiency, this proposal is both unnecessary, because existing provisional labels already allow rapid communication, and undesirable, because genetic patterning alone does not justify naming species. Species are explanatory hypotheses that require names anchored to verifiable type material. Detaching names from types would destabilize nomenclature and erode the evidentiary standards that make systematics a scientific enterprise.