Name-bearing type

[8] In contrast, a subjective synonym is based on a different name-bearing type, but is regarded as representing the same taxon;[9] for example, the name Viverra touan Shaw, 1800, is based on a different name-bearing type (a specimen in the Field Museum of Natural History), but is currently regarded as representing the same species as Didelphis brevicaudata and Didelphys brachyuros.

In 2002, Mausfeld and others used the name for a mainly African group of skinks, designating Lacerta punctata Linnaeus, 1758, as the type species (currently Lygosoma punctatum), but in 2003, Bauer noted that Loveridge had already fixed the type species of Euprepis in 1957 as Scincus agilis (currently Mabuya agilis), invalidating the later fixation by Mausfeld and others.

In species named before 2000 without explicit designation of a holotype, all specimens in the type series are considered as syntypes.

[26] For example, Shaw's name Viverra touan was based on a description of "Le Touan" by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, which left the identity of the name uncertain, and in 2001 Voss and others selected as the neotype a specimen in the Field Museum of Natural History, which thereby becomes the name-bearing type.

[19] Other kinds of name-bearing types are also allowed by the Code, including colonies of asexually reproducing animals, natural casts of fossils, a series of stages of the life cycle of a living protistan (a hapantotype), and some others.