Taxonomic names to be revised, because racism

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

The amount of change to names in the taxonomic system has been quite significant already anyway. All of my older books are seriously out of date - things get classified as different species or subspecies when it is discovered that they are different; genera get split, merged, disbanded and created; many plant families have been renamed (for example Compositae, Umbelliferae and Labiatae are now Asteraceae, Apiaciae and Lamiacaea - having changed from descriptive terminology to being named after a genus that is considered the ‘type’ for the family) and families get split and combined or their members moved from one family to another.

Some of these changes (the moves, splits and such) are absolutely necessary to place the organism in the right place on the taxonomic tree, and arise from DNA evidence of relatedness or ancestry; others, like the renaming of Compositae to Asteraceae, seem to me more like stylistic choices, so it’s not as if the scientific world will be overturned or disrupted by a few more changes.

82

Brontosaurus has been back since 2015.

83

We’ve put those poor dinosaurs through enough.

84

Bully!

85

ISWYDT. Gould would approve.

86

Moderating:

Having beaten to death the topic of “there’s a grossly offensive nickname for ‘black eyed Susan’, that only one poster has ever heard”, let’s drop that topic going forward.

87

No, scientific naming has to be based on useful descriptions or it’s not science. Simply numbering the species would be better than the use of fanciful and inaccurate names.

88

Isn’t there actually a species of something named after Elvis?

89

Hopefully something that grinds its hips…

Edit: meet Preseucoela imallshookupis

Edit to edit, Mr. Presley was apparently well liked within the “creepy-crawly-bug-studying” community, here is species of Elvis Worm (Peinaleopolynoe Elvisi)
.

90

Here’s a wiki page of species named after famous people, and it’s only those born 1900-1949.

Includes ABBA, Stan Lee, Elvis, Nelson Mandela, Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio, Frank Zappa.

91

I disagree - it doesn’t need to be more than a unique key in a database; Fuchsia is a genus of plants named in honour of Leonhart Fuchs; Fuchsia lehmannii is named additionally in honour of Johan Georg Christian Lehmann. This name doesn’t contain any useful information about the plant, but it’s a consistent reference for looking up more information about it, and making sure that you’re referring to a specific thing, and differentiating it from other perhaps similar things.

Fuchsia splendens, on the other hand, is named for the latin term ‘shining’, but… so what? ‘Shining Fuchsia’ isn’t really all that meaningful. You can’t really say a whole lot in two words.

Indeed the binomial system replaced a descriptive one - an example of this from Wikipedia is Plantago media (the hoary plantain) - previously it was named Plantago foliis ovato-lanceolatus pubescentibus, spica cylindrica, scapo tereti which means: plantain with hairy ovate-lanceolate leaves, a cylindric spike and a stem that is oval in cross-section’. Descriptive for sure, but not really all that handy

92

Thing is, the only people who use Latin nomenclature are specialists in those fields. I have a fair amount of formal training and a lifetime of practice as a gardener, paid and otherwise. When I talk to other people like me, I will often and casually use Latin binomials because they are, although irritatingly subject to occasional change, there is no confusion, they are exact, and everyone knows what I’m talking about immediately. But we are a small group. The enormous majority of gardeners have only the dimmest idea of what any plant is called, even the commonest common names, far less the Latin ones.

For example my lifelong-gardening friend, K, sent me some “blue poppy” seeds. I tried to forestall her because the only blue poppy in cultivation I know of is Meconopsis Baileyi, which is notoriously difficult to grow. She insisted, and in fact they were blue, but they were not poppies at all, much less Meconopsis. This is not anomalous. Recently I asked a lady hosting a garden party what her charming small tree was, and she told me “Oh, that’s a Lady Elizabeth”. I asked, “is that the name of the cultivar? What’s the species?” She didn’t know what “species” meant, what “cultivar” meant, and the only name she knew for it she had already told me, a piece of perfectly useless information.

Growing up in a family of avid amateur and professional gardeners and nurserywomen, it took me quite some time to not be gobsmacked by the utter ignorance of names nearly universal in the general public, even those who have gardened all their lives.

So, changing up Latin names is going to affect a very small percentage of the population in any case, and in plants anyway, we are already well used to it. Although it did kinda make me want to tear my hair out when through DNA testing they reclassified the Asters (which is also established as their common name) into Symphyotrichum, Ionactis, Eurybia, Seriocarpus, Doellingera, Oclemena, and Ampleaster. With a few lonely Aster species still left in the decimated genus.

93

Tell that to the aforementioned Basilosaurus, Tyrannasorus rex (that’s not a typo, I don’t mean the dinosaur but the beetle, of course), the pachycephalpsaur Dracorex hogwartsia, and dozens of other species whose name was unintentionally misleading or a joke or a cultural reference.

It has to be unique, as in no other genus can have used the name before, and that’s basically it.

94

The difference there is that we already don’t have much named after Nazis (and of those few we do, changing them is generally pretty uncontroversial), but we have lots of things named after Confederates (and lots of people who defend that resolutely).

And this can be significant. For instance, there’s a tree around here that everyone refers to as “ironwood”, because (unsurprisingly) it has a very strong, dense wood. But it’s very difficult to look up information about it, because it turns out that there are a heck of a lot of unrelated species that are all commonly called “ironwood” in the areas where they’re found, and sometimes it even refers to the wood of common species like maple or oak that’s been aged or treated in particular ways.

95

Yes, I run into this all the time.

96

OK, and?

From the original article:

An group of professional biologists met to discuss their incredibly specialized field at a conference specifically dedicated to that topic, and this is where they made this decision.

Yes, the decision only affects a small number of people, many of whom were at this conference making this decision.

I don’t see why a bunch of lay people need to question their choice to do so.

97

I don’t think taxonomy belongs to specialists. It belongs to everyone. It’s a system though, and systems need control mechanisms - it makes sense that specialists are in charge of managing the system and it’s changes, but the product is there for anyone to use.

98

This can be a real problem in the aquarium fish trade. You could have a dozen different fish who go by the same (very flashy and attractive) trade name, each of which is known by two or three other names.

Sometimes the common name is an (outdated) genus name - may fish in the family Loricariidae are known as ‘Plecos’, short for ‘Plecostomus’, which was once but is no longer a genus name for the most popular group within Loricariidae, Hypostomus.

So you’ll have half a dozen fish species known as ‘snowball’ or ‘sunshine’ or ‘galaxy’ or ‘watermelon’ plecos; and this starlight pleco eats algae and detritus and gets 6 inches long but that one is a strict wood eater that gets 24 inches. Can you tell them apart as babies at the fish store? I hope so, or you’re in for it!

It doesn’t help that there are so many plecos (in both the Amazon basin and in the trade) that not all have been scientifically described, meaning we have dozens of pleco species that are known by their L number - a temporary designation pending full scientific description. Or that there are hybrid and domestic plecos, like the popular Brostlenose plecos that don’t actually exist in the wild.

99

Species names are typically at the whim of the discoverer, subject to review by whatever body reviews these things.They are might be named for the discoverer, or the patron or head of the expedition, or the place they were found in, or the conditions they grow in, as often as for some salient physical trait. They have a certain randomness. The accuracy of the name comes from it being assigned to one specific plant, not the meaning of the name.

For example, the stunning Matilija Poppy, Romneya coulteri, was named for an Irish astronomer, John Thomas Romney Robinson, and an Irish botanist, Thomas Coulter. My guess that it was an Irish scientific expedition which came upon it first.

100

Further thoughts on whether taxonomic names should always be descriptive… I don’t think it’s possible.
There are genera that are sufficiently diverse that no name-able trait of one of any one of the member species would fit all of the others.
And there are species that, whilst distinct, are similar enough that there may simply not be any snappy, one-word way to describe them distinctly from one another; you’d end up with species names that meanthings like ‘slightly thinner than the other one’, which are useless out of context, or names that describe some differentiating feature that isn’t anywhere close to being a conspicuous descriptor for the organism.
Also there are probably cases where two completely unrelated organisms would both equally deserve the same name.