[Taxacom] Gender of the genus name Xymmer

[Masashi Yoshimura]

Dear Dr. Doug Yanega,

Thank you very much for your wonderful solution.
Now I wrote the name down on my note, and... you are right.

Although I have been stuck by this puzzle for a while, you find the solution in a moment...
Could you tell me how you know it is an anagram?

With warm regards,

Yoshi.
***************************************
Masashi Yoshimura Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Entomology
California Academy of Sciences

Golden Gate Park
55 Music Concourse Drive
San Francisco, California 94118, U.S.A.
e-mail: myoshimura at ant-database.org

On 2011/07/13, at 15:42, Doug Yanega wrote:

>> Dear all,
>> 
>> I would like to ask you if someone can guess the gender of the following genus name: Xymmer.
>> 
>> Xymmer is an ant genus name.
>> This genus was described by Santschi (1914) as a monotypic subgenus, and Stigmatomma (Xymmer) muticum was designated as the type species.
>> Unfortunately, the author did not provide any etymology for this name.
>> This subgenus was synonymized with the genus Amblyopone, and former S. muticum is called as Amblyopone mutica now.
>> I would like to resurrect Xymmer as a genus from synonymy, however, I could not find the correct spelling of the type species, either Xymmer muticus, mutica, or muticum.
>> I would be grateful if some of you could give me some suggestions. Do you know if it is derived from any old greek word? Or do you think it might refer to something else, such as a person's or locality name?
> 
> "Xymmer" is an arbitrary combination of letters, an anagram for "Myrmex". It is masculine, by default, unless the author specified otherwise. Thus, were it to be used as a genus name, the combination would be "Xymmer muticus (Santschi, 1914)".
> 
> Peace,
> -- 
> 
> Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
> phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
>             http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
>  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
>