[Taxacom] a question of Latin ...

Robin Leech releech at telus.net
Thu Aug 2 15:53:08 CDT 2012


And here I thought that the number of referee-reviewed publications you
issue is what keeps them paying you.  Hardly a recipe...
Robin

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
Sent: August-02-12 2:10 PM
To: Mark Wilden; Michael Heads
Cc: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] a question of Latin ...

>Apparently, Smith was paid by the number of specimens cataloged - 
>hardly a recipe for precision<
 
Oh, how we have come such a long way from those days ... now we get paid by
citation rates! Hardly a recipe ...
 
S :)

From: Mark Wilden <mark at mwilden.com>
To: Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
Cc: Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Friday, 3 August 2012 5:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] a question of Latin ...

n Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 10:22 PM, Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> (The point was really that biologists in the 18th and 19th centuries 
> knew their Latin).

Understood.

> Do you have a reference for that, or a name of the source if it's a pers.
> comm.?

The remark is by W.L. Brown in Ant taxonomy. 1955. In E.L. Kessel, ed.
A century of progress in the natural sciences, 1853-1953. pp. 569-572.
California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco. I may have misquoted it
slightly, but not much.

I came across this article when I got the job as the AntCat developer at Cal
Academy. Before I started working there, I started reading Holldobler and
Wilson's Ants, where they mention that "a perceptive and  entertaining
account of the early history of ant taxonomy has been written by Brown" (p.
23). It was fun to be able to just wander up to the library at the museum
and read the original article on my first day of work.

It's opinionated overall, but Brown really opens up a can of whoop-ass on
the British Museum's F. Smith. Apparently, Smith was paid by the number of
specimens cataloged - hardly a recipe for precision.

A small group of prominent myrmecologists trekked to the top of a mountain
in Borneo, consumed numerous beers, and alternately read aloud from this
article.

///ark

Mark Wilden
Web Applications Developer
California Academy of Sciences
www.antcat.org



>
> Michael
>
> On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 5:08 PM, Mark WIlden <mark at mwilden.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Aug 1, 2012, at 9:41 PM, Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > . Frederick Smith
>> > (British Museum, President of the Royal Entomological Society, 
>> > Darwin correspondent etc.) named Prolasius advenus and Cabro 
>> > advenus. (He was the first entomologist to publish descriptions of 
>> > more than a hundred ant species that still hold validity).
>>
>> Smith's work was of such low quality that one myrmecological giant 
>> said that "it would have been better if he had never seen an ant".
>>
>> ///ark
>> Mark Wilden
>> California Academy of Sciences
>> www.antcat.org
>>
>>
>> > Amos Eaton (who taught James Dwight Dana, Asa Gray, John Torrey 
>> > etc.) named the fly Telmatoscopus advenus.
>> > Vernon Kellogg, professor of entomology at Stanford for 26 years 
>> > (he taught the scientist president Herbert Hoover) named the louse 
>> > Rallicola adventus.
>> > Baron Karl-Robert von Osten-Sacken was the Russian consul general 
>> > in New York in the American civil war, and is also known as an 
>> > entomologist (he introduced the trem chaetotaxy); he named the 
>> > tephritid Torymus advenus Alcide d'Orbigny, the well-known student 
>> > of Cuvier, named the foram Cibicides advenus.
>> > Michael
>> >
>> > On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 3:27 PM, Stephen Thorpe
>> > <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>wrote:
>> >
>> >> well, just because you can find binomials which use advenus 
>> >> doesn't mean that they are correct -  it could be a common mistake 
>> >> ...
>> >>
>> >> Brown (1956) Composition of Scientific Words makes no reference to 
>> >> anyadjectival advenus ...
>> >>
>> >> Stephen
>> >>
>> >>  *From:* Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
>> >> *To:* Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org>
>> >> *Cc:* Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>> >> *Sent:* Thursday, 2 August 2012 2:46 PM
>> >> *Subject:* Re: [Taxacom] a question of Latin ...
>> >>
>> >> Hi Stephen and Curtis,
>> >>
>> >> It seems to be a bit more complicated than that. In classical 
>> >> Latin 'advena' was used mainly (only?) as a noun in apposition. 
>> >> It's also used this way in many binomials (e.g. the beetle 
>> >> Ahasverus advena).
>> >>
>> >> But in a great many binomials it has been used as an adjective - a 
>> >> quick Google search revealed genera with masculine names in 
>> >> plants, Coleoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera, Homoptera, Phthiraptera, 
>> >> fishes, birds and mammals that include species named 'advenus'. 
>> >> Lewis and Short (still the standard reference for later Latin) 
>> >> lists 'advena' as both a noun and an adjective.
>> >>
>> >> So, no need to change all the names with advenus.
>> >> Michael Heads
>> >> On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Curtis Clark 
>> >> <lists at curtisclark.org>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> On 8/1/2012 4:56 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>> >>>> Does anyone know if the specific epithet advena is unchangeable 
>> >>>> when
>> >> the
>> >>> gender of the genus changes? In other words, is there such an 
>> >>> epithet as advenus?
>> >>>
>> >>> It's a noun in apposition, so it would always be advena. The 
>> >>> corresponding adjective seems to be adventicius.
>> >>>
>> >>> --
>> >>> Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark After 
>> >>> 2012-01-02:
>> >>> Biological Sciences                  +1 909 869 4140 Cal Poly 
>> >>> Pomona, Pomona CA 91768
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> _______________________________________________
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>> >>
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> Wellington, New Zealand.
>> >>
>> >> My new book: *Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. 
>> >> *University of California Press, Berkeley.
>> >>
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>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Wellington, New Zealand.
>> >
>> > My new book: *Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University 
>> > of California Press, Berkeley.
>> > _______________________________________________
>> >
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Wellington, New Zealand.
>
> My new book: Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. University of 
> California Press, Berkeley.
>
>
>

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