Erratum: Medical parasitology taxonomy update, January 2018 to May 2020 (Journal of Clinical Microbiology (2021) 59:2 (e01308-20) DOI: 10.1128/JCM.01308-20)

In our article, Leishmania siamensis was placed in synonymy with L. martiniquensis based on Espinosa et al. (1). It was brought to our attention that L. siamensis should be placed in synonymy with L. orientalis. After re-reviewing the literature, we agree with this assessment. In order to provide clarity to the readership of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, we present here a brief taxonomic history of L. orientalis. 1. Sukmee et al. (2) identified a potentially novel species of Leishmania from Thailand and used the name Leishmania siamensis for those sequences submitted in GenBank. However, the name was not formally described under the requirements of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). A few studies in animals used the name L. siamensis because their sequences matched those by Sukmee et al. (2) in GenBank. A study of leishmaniasis in Thailand by Leelayoova et al. (3) revealed the presence of two species: L. martiniquensis and the novel “L. siamensis.” 2. Espinosa et al. (1) placed L. siamensis in synonymy with L. martiniquensis. 3. In 2018, Jariyapan et al. (4) formally described the isolate based on molecular analysis of rRNA ITS1, RPL23a, RNA PolII, and HSP70 genes and named it L. orientalis. It is possible Espinosa and colleagues (1) were unaware of the work by Jariyapan et al. (4), since the latter publication came out between the Epub (2016) and formal publication (2018) of their work. We thank Mathirus Mungthin, Saovanee Leelayoova, and Suradej Siripattanapippong for bringing this to our attention.