common and scientific names

[Barry Roth]

American Fisheries Society Special Publication 16 (1988) is "Common and
Scientific Names of Aquatic Invertebrates from the United States and Canada,
Mollusks," and proceeds on about the same basis as the AOU list for birds.
A second edition is now in preparation; lists for other invertebrate groups
are either published or in the works.

The introduction includes an interesting set of rules and criteria governing
names to be used.  (Most of the names were created by the authors of the
list, because species of cryptic, forest-duff land snails, for instance,
generally don't come with vernacular names.)  Discussion drafts are widely
circulated before publication.  Drafts were posted to an FTP site and
announced on the MOLLUSCA List.

If one accepts the social need for an official vernacular names list, this
would seem to be the way to go about creating one.

 Barry Roth                             barryr at ucmp1.berkeley.edu
 Research Associate, Museum of Paleontology
 University of California, Berkeley, CA 94117 USA   (415) 387-8538