Valediction: descriptions of novel prokaryotic taxa published in Antonie van Leeuwenhoek—change in editorial policy and a signpost to the future?

Over the past decade Antonie van Leeuwenhoek has emerged as a significant journal supporting microbial systematics research. In that period the journal has published more than 900 systematics papers and reviews, mainly descriptions of novel prokaryotic species, along with significant papers on yeast taxonomy (for example Kurtzman 2011; Daniel et al. 2014). Importantly it has been central to the work of the journal’s Editors to uphold the principles and rules of the international Codes that are crucial to ensuring stable nomenclature of both fungal and prokaryotic taxa (Sutcliffe and Trujillo 2013). Indeed, it is rewarding that a high percentage of the new prokaryotic names ‘effectively published’ in Antonie van Leeuwenhoek are subsequently validated in the Lists published by the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (Oren et al. 2018).