[WikiEN-l] Species names

[Tony Wilson]

STV wrote: it does seem strange that you wrote two long-winded retorts
to her one short statement. (Sometimes, for reasons that escape me, the
posts come through out of order. Something to do with time zones or
individual system clock settings, I guess.)

Anyway, that's not so, STV. Read the posts over: you will see that I
wrote a single post of medium length this moning, which Zoe  then
replied to saying that she had been " attacked so fiercely" - which is
odd, as I don't recall attacking Zoe at all. I suspect that an
examination of the record will bear this out. She then went on to claim
that I was engaging in "continuing personal attacks". Nonsense.  I have
been forced to make a series of personal DEFENCES, which is a very
different thing. So I posted a brief reply to that, setting the record
straight. 

Moving on to the subject of EC's unilaterial edit war and cut & paste
page move, having already called me a liar, EC then wrote: "I can
affirm that I did not use it [cut & paste] in the course of this edit
war". 

I invite readers to visit
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Giant_panda&diff=988572&oldi
d=988552 and see the evidence for themselves.

-------

Now, with that out of the way, I'll move on to add yet more citations
to those which I have given previously, let's start with this one:

The Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles
The American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists
and The Herpetologists’ League

have a joint commitee on English and scientific names, which is working
to "achieve the goal of making a list of Standard English Names for
North America and the world", adds some comments about the practical
worth of common names in a broader sense that are worthy of further
consideration. The para is lengthy, so I'll edit down a bit. As their
examples, they take  ''Cynocephalus mormon''  and ''Cynocephalus
sphinx'' (the Mandril and the Guinea Baboon). 

Since 1904, these names have undergone the following
vagaries:''Cynocephalus mormon'' became ''Papio mormon'', otherwise
''Papio maimon'', which turned to ''Papio sphinx''. This might well
have been confused with ''Cynocephalus'', now become ''Papio sphinx''
,had not the latter meanwhile been turned into ''Papio papio'' .This
danger averted, ''Papio sphinx'' now became ''Mandrillus sphinx'',
while ''Papio papio'' became ''Papio comatus''  

Their point, in short, is that if you want to refer to one of these two
species and be sure that the reader knows which one you actually mean,
you really *have* to use the common name! 

Oh, and they capitalise species names as a matter of policy.

The Ohio Odonata Society  says: "English names have been determined for
Odonata, (Paulson and Dunkle 1996), and accepted by the Dragonfly
Society of the Americas (DSA) in an effort to bring some control to
common names, thus addressing the demand for common names that has
grown with interest in the order. Common names should be capitalized
when referring to a species, but lower case when speaking in general.
For example, we refer to dragonflies in general but to a King Skimmer
(genus Libellula) or the Common Green Darner, (Anax junius).
Capitalizing species names is desirable because many of them begin with
adjectives or adverbs. It is difficult to determine the name of the
common green darner (where ‘common’ might be editorial comment) as
opposed to the Common Green Darner."

The Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales (Australia) says:
"Generic and specific scientific names are to be in italics.
Standardized vernacular (common) names for species should be
capitalised and first used in conjunction with the full scientific name
and the scientific name should be used for all subsequent references to
the species.When using the common name in conjunction with the
scientific name, do not put the scientific name in brackets. Both
common names and scientific names may be used in captions to tables,
figures and photos. Common names used in a “generic” sense (eg: cats,
dogs, foxes, eucalypts) should not be capitalised or italicised."

In the course of looking that stuff up (wasting yet more perfectly good
editing time) I also stumbled across a number of other references,
which serve to confirm the two broad trends that I and others have
remarked on previously:

(a) That decaptialisation is largely an American practice and is much
less common in other English-speaking parts of the world.

(b) More interestingly, that there seems to be an almost 1:1
relationship between the degree to which species names are capitalised
in different taxa, and the extent to which species names are formalised
and standardised. 

This makes excellent sense, when you think about it. In the case of
birds, a common name is an exact 1:1 equivalent to the binomial name.
It is, like the name of a type of aircraft or a model of car, a
quasi-proper noun. Bird common names are not duplicated, even between
different continents, and capitalisation of bird common names is
practically universal. With mammals, the story is much the same. From
my reading today, I gather that reptile names are not far behind
either.

However, with fish this process is not as well developed. here are far
more conflicting or ambiguous names, and capitalisation is less broadly
supported - although nevertheless vigorously debated and something of a
50/50 call.

With arthropods (insects and spiders and so on), common names are not
terribly useful as yet (and may never be). According to the American
Arthropod society, more than 50% of the *families* do not have a common
name yet, never mind individual species. Here, clearly, we have a
situation where common names are little if any better than nicknames,
and a strong case for decapitalisation can be mounted.(They themselves
do not capitalise.)

Finally, there is flora. The common names of plants are a horrible
mess. Within any one geographic area they seem to be consistent enough,
certainly for the larger species (trees, shrubs, wildflowers), but
*between* areas they often conflict with one another. Australian plant
common names, for example, do not conflict with one another, but *do*
conflict with the names of other, completely different, plants in
Europe and America. Eventually, one supposes, the botanical authorities
will get their act together as the bird, mammal and reptile people
have, and as the fish people are trying to do. In the meantime, though,
plant common names are not terribly helpful a lot of the time. It is no
doubt this very reason that stands behind the much greater usage of
botanical names by laypeople interested in plants as opposed to very
little usage of binomial names by laypeople interested in animals.
Indeed, I am wondering if, as time goes by and the flora sections start
 to fill up, it might be sensible to consider using botanical names for
plants more. (I'm not convinced that that is the best way to go, but
it's certainly something that ought to be considered.)

Tony