#zoological nomenclature

[markscherz]

if i got to name bugs and frogs i would name them things like "XXhehehehehesillybugXX285939darkdestroyer"

You can do this for common names if you want, but according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, scientific names (1) must be comprised only of the Latin alphabet (i.e., no numbers; Article 11.2), (2) must be formed to be used as a word, even if they are made of an arbitrary combination of letters (Article 11.3), and (3) a species group name always begins with a lower-case first letter (Article 28)

[teachersource]

Carl Linnaeus was born on May 23, 1707. A Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". In botany and zoology, the abbreviation L. is used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for a species' name. In older publications, the abbreviation "Linn." is found. Linnaeus's remains constitute the type specimen for the species Homo sapiens following the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, since the sole specimen that he is known to have examined was himself.

[tossatossa]

every now and then I encounter more of this

Dracaena?!

[frimleyblogger]

More Scientific Fun

The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) has some guidelines as to what is acceptable in establishing a scientific name and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the avoidance of foul language is one of them. This, of course, raises a whole host of problems because what is foul language to one person may not make another blanche at all. And then there are the anarchists who are…

[snailkites]

Big news for bird names: American Ornithological Society to replace eponyms

AOS intends to change all offensive and eponymous (named after people) common names of birds in the USA and Canada.

Renaming these species will be done with involvement of the public and overseen by a new committee made up of ornithologists, social scientists, and communications and taxonomy experts.

AOS will work with the ornithological societies of Central and South America determine who in these regions will maintain stewardship of common English names.

AOS announcement: https://americanornithology.org/about/english-bird-names-project/american-ornithological-society-council-statement-on-english-bird-names

More information under the cut.

How do bird names work? Scientific names (binomials like Zonotrichia albicollis) are set by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. These names are meant to be unique, unchanging, and universally recognized. Common names, on the other hand, are more fluid. The American Ornithological Society is the recognized authority on English-language common names for North American birds, published in their annual Checklist.

The larger context. Ornithologists name birds after people to commemorate those individuals, but this create problems. What do you do when a common name is racist, or when a bird is named after someone who, frankly, sucked? AOS has changed bird names for both of these reasons already.

In 2000 AOS changes the common name of Clangula hyemalis from a racist word for Native women to Long-tailed Duck (although at the time, they denied it was because of "political correctness")

2021: AOS changes the common name of Rhynchophanes mccownii from McCown's Longspur to Thick-billed Longspur. McCown was a Confederate. The push to rename this bird was a flashpoint in the #birdnames4birds movement.

Why not decide one-by-one? Sometimes it's obvious. For example, John James Audubon was a grave-robbing, slave-owning racist; birds such as Audubon's Oriole and Audubon's Shearwater are named after him. Although the National Audubon Society has voted to keep their name ("won't someone consider the branding"), many chapters have changed their names, e.g. the Chicaco Bird Alliance. Other individuals with birds named after them are less well-known or clear-cut in how much they did or did not suck. Removing all eponyms, rather than debating who sucks on a case-by-case basis, will cut down on the arguments.

How will this actually happen? It's not yet clear. Any free-for-all-poll might result in some Birdy McBirdFaces. No timeline either. But it sounds like this really is happening!

[hbmmaster]

in zoology, animal species are given standard "latin" names consisting of two words, the genus name and the species name. typically, the genus name is a noun, and the species name is an adjective. following the rules of latin grammar, adjectives need to agree with nouns with grammatical gender, so if the genus name is a feminine latin noun then all species of that genus are given (in principle) adjectives marked with feminine latin suffixes.

in practice of course, new genus names don't always use actual latin words, so these latin grammatical gender rules need to be grafted onto words that aren't really latin. and this is where one of the weirdest conventions of zoological binomial nomenclature comes in!

how exactly do you determine what the latin grammatical gender of a word is if it isn't a latin word? according to the ICZN, it's simple:

if the word is from greek, use its gender in greek

otherwise, if the word is from a modern european language with grammatical gender that uses the latin alphabet, use the gender in the source language (yes it is that specific)

otherwise, if the name ends with -a it's feminine

otherwise, if the name ends with -um, -u, or -o it's neuter

otherwise, it's masculine

unless of course if the zoologist with naming dibs says explicitly that they think this genus should have an irregular gender.

anyway these rules are fascinating to me. why are they this specific? grammatical gender systems compatible with latin's adjective suffixes are found throughout the entire indo-european language family, so why restrict it to modern european latin-script languages (and greek)? I don't know!

[violetsandshrikes]

one insect i feel particularly sorry for is known as Anophthalmus hitleri, a species of blind cave beetle found only in ~15 humid caves in Slovenia. it’s not a formal common name, but it is also known as the Hitler bug.

in 1933, it was discovered/documented by an Oskar Scheibel, who was an Austrian collector and ardent fan of Hitler - the scientific name came as a dedication as at this point, Adolf Hitler had recently become the Chancellor of Germany. The full scientific name is roughly translated to “the eyeless one of Hitler”

it’s a fairly plain looking beetle - it doesn’t have any bright or bold colours, unusual features or behaviour. it is however of interest to collectors, and there is now concern about its status as a species because of right wing extremists who collect it as nazi memorabilia.

changing the name of this beetle has been pitched multiple times. the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature however holds that “the first name validly given to a species is its correct name and does not in general allow for a name to be invalidated due to causing offense.” furthermore, the president of the ICZN, Thomas Pape, has said "It was not offensive when it was proposed, and it may not be offensive 100 years from now."

[crevicedwelling]

So who's in charge of naming the bugs? Why don't all bugs get non scientific names?

whoever formally describes a species gets to name it. this usually means listing taxonomically relevant information about how it differs from its relatives, like the number of spines on its legs or bill length or how the scales on its head are arranged. if you’ve got something new, then you can give it whatever name you want. binomial names are essentially permanent and extremely hard to change. however, if someone already described that species without you knowing it (maybe 200 years ago, even) or it turns out that it wasn’t unique enough to merit species status, then the older name almost always takes priority. new species, and these sorts of changes, are managed by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (there’s different one for plants).

as for common names… nobody is in charge of those! …except for the English common names of birds, determined by the International Ornithological Committee. organizations might try to standardize common names for fish or mammals on a smaller scale, such as per country, but birds are the only group with an internationally standardized system.

common names generally only apply to species that are well-known or otherwise noticeable by people, like butterflies, beetles, flies, and wasps. flashy things or economically important pests or invertebrates named to raise awareness about them get common names, because those are things people care about. common names start getting weird and inefficient when you’re dealing with hundreds of species that are visually pretty much identical and will never be noticed or seen by anyone except biologists who won’t use the common names anyway. in general, scientific names are better to use since they are better organized and (typically) universally recognized by biologists.

there are official common names for all 11,000 birds because from a human standpoint, many look or act or are distributed differently, and they’re things non-scientists will go out to look for. however, you’d need orders of magnitude more names for all the beetles, there’s 400,000 of them! I can’t imagine how convoluted a naming system they would need, plus, most people aren’t ever going to use those names.

however, with the advent of citizen science projects like iNaturalist, and unusual interest in certain taxa such as the pet isopod hobby, many species that otherwise wouldn’t have common names are getting them! technically you can make up a common name for any critter (other than birds, because Bird Common Names Are Official)—which speaks to the unreliability of common names. still, they’re sort of nice to have when speaking about them in a more general context, and maybe help people get more interested in creatures when they don’t have to struggle with a binomen (although quite frankly I think Latin/Greek is not half as scary as it looks to some).

[snakemanaustralia]

New to science .... more new species of lizards in Australia.

Hoser, R. T. 2024. Small and overlooked. New species and subspecies within the Australian skink genera Morethia Gray, 1845 and the closely associated Solvonemesis Wells and Wellington, 1984.. Australasian Journal of Herpetology 72:3-13.

Hoser, R. T. 2024. Pleistocene splits in the Australian Odatria tristis (Schlegel, 1839) species and Pantherosaurus rosenbergi (Mertens, 1957) complexes. The formal identification and naming of a new species and three new subspecies.. Australasian Journal of Herpetology 72:14-24.

Hoser, R. T. 2024. Out from the cold - a new species of Australian Jacky Dragon Amphibolurus Wagler, 1830 from the region near the southern border between South Australia and Victoria as well as a new subspecies from New South Wales and Victoria. Australasian Journal of Herpetology 72:25-28.

Hoser, R. T. 2024. Before we end up with mutts! The formal diagnosis of subspecies within the Sydney basin species, Hoplocephalus bungaroides (Schlegel, 1837) and Amalosia lesueurii (Dumeril and Bibron, 1836). Australasian Journal of Herpetology 72:29-34.

Hoser, R. T. 2024. Two new subspecies of Mountain Dragon, Rankinia boylani Wells and Wellington, 1984 from New South Wales, Australia. Australasian Journal of Herpetology 72:35-39.

Hoser, R. T. 2024. A new subspecies of Hesperoedura reticulata (Bustard, 1969) from south-central Western Australia. Australasian Journal of Herpetology 72:40-42.

Hoser, R. T. 2024. Atraserpens, a new genus of Australian small-eyed snakes from Eastern Australia as well as a new subspecies of the Northern Small-eyed Snake Cryptophis pallidiceps (Gunther, 1858) from north-west Western Australia (Serpentes: Elapidae). Australasian Journal of Herpetology 72:43-46.

Hoser, R. T. 2024. Taxonomic vandalism by Wolfgang Wuster and his gang of thieves. Yet more illegally coined names by the rule breakers for species and genera previously named according to the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Australasian Journal of Herpetology 72:47-63.

[unnervinglyferal]

Ok so, it’s not super interesting as it’s basically just a few dudes making confusing classification notes and another dude getting confused

But what happened was in 1731 Mark Catesby drew and described both the passenger pigeon and the mourning dove in his book, using the common name “Pigeon of passage” with the scientific name of “Palumbus migratorius” for the passenger pigeon, and the common name “Turtle of Carolina” with “Turtur carolinensis” for the mourning dove.

This is fine, this is normal, the only other thing that might come into play is that I think they were right next to each other.

Now in 1743 George Edwards writes his own book, he includes the mourning dove, but under the common name “long-tail’d dove” with the scientific name “Columba macroura”.

I am unsure why they used different scientific names.

This isn’t quite so fine, normal yes, but this will cause confusion.

The real problem comes in when fucking Carl Linnaeus, the guy who’s name you see almost every time you look at a scientific name because they but his name in little letters under it, in 1758 puts out the tenth edition of his book and merges the passenger pigeon and the mourning dove. He uses Edwards’ scientific name Columba macroura but the description was based off Catesby’s. This would’ve been normal and fine if he hadn’t merged the two species. Because then he fucking cites Edwards’ description of the mourning dove and Catesby’s description of the passenger pigeon.

This lasts for far too long in my opinion, because it doesn’t get changed until 1766 in his twelfth edition, where he drops Columba macroura completely and instead uses Columba migratoria for the passenger pigeon.

And then he does something I’m very confused by.

It does not help that the wiki article is not clear on it.

But to me it seems like he separates Catesby’s and Edwards’ mourning doves into two separate species, Columba cariolensis and Columba marginata respectively.

I do not know why, there are things called subspecies but that’s not how scientific names for subspecies work.

Now it finally, fucking finally, gets fixed in 1952 by Francis Hemming who asked the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature to make macroura the official name for the mourning dove and migratorius for the passenger pigeon. Because that’s what the original authors had intended.

It was finalized in 1955.

I’d like to note that at some point it got put into a different genus, Zenaida, I’m unsure when they got reclassified. That part is normal, animals change genus’ all the time, mainly because as we get better tools and data we realize that actually these birds aren’t related and these ones are.

Academia really does consist of people who are fixated on things nobody else even knows about, and beating the shit out of each other over it, huh?

[hasellia]

Okay so I was scouring jojowiki.com as usual and it says there that Diego's dinosaur form is based on an outdated record of a Utahraptor, and I don't know anything about them but I have a slight suspicion they were found in Utah.

I dunno just thought it was funny how to the point the name is. "it's a raptor in Utah, let's call it Utahraptor"

You blame Jim Kirkland over on his twitter for naming them that.

But yeah, "[Place name]saurus [place name]ensis" is a meme in the paleocommunity for a reason. (The word "ensis" meaning "from [place name]".) Image souce: Adam-Loves-Dinosaurs.

I think Utahraptor is probably the most famous one. When another large dromeosaur was found in Dakota, DePalma felt it natural to smash the usual dromeosaur suffix of "raptor" with the prefix of [Place name] to name Dakotaraptor.

A dinosaur not many realise was intended to be named after a place is Mamenchisaurus. (Source: Cervente on Tumblr)

It was discovered in (yes I'm using Wikipedia's text) Mǎmíngxī (马鸣溪 'horse-neighing brook') by Yang Zhongjian (楊鍾健), grandfather of Chinese Palaeontology. However, Yang wasn't from the area and mistook the intonation for the locale name. So he ended up calling it (馬門溪龍屬), from Mǎménxī (马门溪 'horse-gate brook').

That's probably the most fun one I can think of, but the others are like...

Koreacertops. Aegyptosaurus. Argentinosaurus. Patagotitan (Patagonia). Chilesaurus (Chile, but apparently it sounds like "dick" in latin countries?) Edmontosaurus (Canadian province, Edmonton). Albertosaurus (Candadian province Alberta, named after Princess Louise Carolina Alberta... named after Prince Albert). Gondwanasuchus (A crocodile actually, that was found in São Paulo, you know where, which USED to be part of the supercontinent Gondwana). Adamantisaurus is named from the same formation the croc was found, Adamantina.

Probably the most common kind of argument on the internet regarding dinosaurs at the moment is names and... IMO, it's not worth it unless it's REALLY bad or a bit mishandled, like Kuru kulla or Mamenchisaurus. But then, that's what the ICZN (International Code of Zoological Nomenclature) is usually for.

Anyway, Thanos is the worst dinosaur name in current use. Grapes, I need your Brazilian Portuguese expertise to write a strongly worded letter to Rafael Delcourt and Fabiano Vidoi Iori on good naming conventions. Obrigado Uva!

[new-dinosaurs]

Plocealauda Alström et al., 2023 (new genus)

(An individual of Plocealauda assamica, photographed by J.M.Garg, under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Meaning of name: Plocealauda = Ploceus [genus of weaverbirds including the Asian golden weaver] Alauda [genus of larks including the Eurasian skylark]

Species included: P. assamica (Bengal bush lark, type species, previously in Mirafra), P. affinis (Jerdon’s bush lark, previously in Mirafra), P. erythrocephala (Indochinese bush lark, previously in Mirafra), P. erythroptera (Indian bush lark, previously in Mirafra), and P. microptera (Burmese bush lark, previously in Mirafra)

Age: Holocene (Meghalayan), extant

Where found: Open habitats in Southern and Southeast Asia

Notes: Plocealauda is a genus of larks, a group of largely ground-dwelling songbirds that live in open habitats, mainly in Afro-Eurasia. The members of Plocealauda are among the many larks that were formerly classified in the genus Mirafra. Traditionally, Mirafra included about two dozen lark species that have relatively robust bills and range across Africa, southern Asia, and Australia. However, a new study finds that this classic conception of Mirafra not only includes many more species than other lark genera, but also probably originated substantially earlier than closely related genera.

For the sake of consistency, the authors of this study suggest that Mirafra should be split up into four separate genera. One of these genera keeps the name Mirafra, whereas the old names Corypha and Amirafra are resurrected for two others. For the fourth group, the name Plocealauda has been used in 19th Century literature, but because past uses of this name did not fulfill the requirements of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature to establish a new genus name, the authors of the new study had to formally coin Plocealauda as a new name in their paper for it to be considered valid.

Reference: Alström, P., Z. Mohammadi, E.D. Enbody, M. Irestedt, D. Engelbrecht, P.-A. Crochet, A. Guillaumet, L. Rancilhac, B.I. Tieleman, U. Olsson, P.F. Donald, and M. Stervander. 2023. Systematics of the avian family Alaudidae using multilocus and genomic data. Avian Research 14: 100095. doi: 10.1016/j.avrs.2023.100095

[o-craven-canto]

1.1.1. For the purposes of this Code the term "animals" refers to the Metazoa and also to protistan taxa when workers treat them as animals for the purposes of nomenclature (see also Article 2).

Gotta love how the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature defines its scope. "This code applies to animals, which are defined as the organisms to which this code applies".

[snakebusters]

Australasian Journal of Herpetology ® Issue 70, published 27 May 2024

There is one paper published across the whole volumes (64 pages). It is easiest to download the whole thing as one big file (first option / link below).Hoser, R. T. 2024. Sliding into scientific reality. Taxonomic changes to the Australian skink genus Lerista Bell, 1833 sensu lato, including the erection of 8 new genera, 19 new species and 5 new subspecies. ... Australasian Journal of Herpetology 70:1-64.Australasian Journal of Herpetology, Issue 70 Front Cover.Australasian Journal of Herpetology, Issue 70 Back Cover.Full Zoobank listing of all species, genera, family and taxonomic works of the Snakeman Raymond Hoser as of 27 May 2024 (over 2,000 entities named, over 1,300 species and subspecies).Copyright: All rights reserved.Australasian Journal of Herpetology ®ICZN Case 3601 ... ICZN Ruled on 30 April 2021 that all published issues of Australasian Journal of Herpetology ® is validly published according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and also that all new names within are valid and have priority over later names.Return to index for AJH Published IssuesPublished as part of the permanent scientific record. Intellectual property rights reserved. Australasian Journal of Herpetology ®Nomenclatural Acts in Australasian Journal of Herpetology ® Issue 70 Total number 32 Genus Group Aaah Hoser, 2024 Acdc Hoser, 2024 Ah Hoser, 2024 Get Hoser, 2024 Go Hoser, 2024 Labi Hoser, 2024 Oh Hoser, 2024 Tism Hoser, 2024 Species Group Aaah ngandatha Hoser, 2024 Aaah skink Hoser, 2024 Ah ha Hoser, 2024 Gaia arrernte Hoser, 2024 Gaia asgicondi Hoser, 2024 Gaia kunja Hoser, 2024 Gaia oomph Hoser, 2024 Gaia pitjantjatjara Hoser, 2024 Get intoit Hoser, 2024 Get it Hoser, 2024 Marrunisauria gurindji Hoser, 2024 Marrunisauria ngarinyin Hoser, 2024 Marrunisauria wam Hoser, 2024 Miculia ruficauda Hoser, 2024 Oh kay Hoser, 2024 Oh know Hoser, 2024 Oh phuk Hoser, 2024 Oh sheet Hoser, 2024 Oh yes Hoser, 2024 Soridia luxflavo Hoser, 2024 Spectrascincus hit Hoser, 2024 Spectrascincus thingi Hoser, 2024 Tychismia valentici Hoser, 2024 Tychismia wellsei Hoser, 2024

[frimleyblogger]

Scrotum Humanum Revisited

The misidentification of a fossilized femur in Richard Brookes’ book, A New and Accurate System of Natural History (1763), as a human scrotum was to have enormous repercussions in the world of paleontology. The French philosopher and naturalist, Jean-Baptiste Robinet, included an illustration of the fossil in his Considerations philosophiques de la gradiation nturelle des forms (1768) which was…

[paleobird]

"if I was to give you a dinosaur name, it would need to be bedheraptor, if only because of how quickly I fell for you." ...there would be barely a second of her trying to hold in he rramblings before it escaped. "although if I were giving a dinosaur name, it would need to of course obey to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, although perhaps using the secondary naming scheme similar to Ornithodesmus - given the link between avian and human characteristics; although since not an evolutionary link, perhaps use instead the greek term omoios for smiilarity or likeness, so a term like Andria omios, although i am unsure if that would designate enough characteristics, as opposed to something like andrias raptor, though I am unsure. I am much more comfortable with the naming schema for the genus of current animals, in which case I believe you would fall under the family of Accipitridae and the subfamily of Harpiinae, not just because you're called harpies - and since Harpiinae Harpia is already taken by the Harpy eagle, perhaps you would be catogerized under something similar to harpiinae sapia? ...i just realize I completly lost the point of this convesation, i apologize."

She's used to Iyana's ramblings at this point--and she's guilty of them herself--so Ava was content to let her girlfriend run through her chaotic thought process before she spoke up.

"I believe our official scientific name is Aquila sapia, actually. I wish we were more closely related to actual harpy eagles, but it's never that straightforward, is it?"

She leaned forward to give Iyana a kiss. "You can call me way more fun things in private if you want, though..."