Taxacom: Tropicos and gender of names

[Douglas Yanega]

On 2/7/22 8:11 PM, Sharkey, Michael J. wrote:
> Does all of this discourse not make it obvious that gender agreement 
> is a Victorian era remnant that has no place in modern, machine-read, 
> names? We only need unique identifiers. Complete nonsense. Stick with 
> the original spelling regardless.

Actually, I come to the exact opposite conclusion: that we have machines 
available suggests to me that we should take advantage of technology to 
resolve the dilemma.


To use an example close to your home, imagine I'm a braconid taxonomist 
working with the genus Diachasma. I look up Diachasma in the registry 
online, and it says that the genus is neuter. I don't need to go to a 
lexicon, just to the registry. I'm done with that, and it took all of 10 
seconds.


I have a species in that genus named dentatum, and I decide that it 
belongs instead in the genus Diachasmimorpha. I look up Diachasmimorpha 
in the registry online, and it says that the genus is feminine. I look 
at the registry for Diachasma dentatum, and it says the species epithet 
is an adjective, and *right there in the registry* it says that the 
alternative spellings are dentatus, dentata, and dentatum.


I know exactly how to spell the name after I transfer it to its new 
genus, and it took me maybe 30 seconds total.


I also want to transfer Diachasma muliebre into Diachasmimorpha. I look 
it up, and the registry says that this is also adjectival, with 
alternative spellings muliebris, muliebris, and muliebre.


It tells me Diachasma silenis is a noun, with no alternative spellings, 
and so on.


I don't need to know Latin or Greek, I don't need to research etymology, 
I don't need to see the original papers, I just need to type the name 
into the search engine in the registry. It's trivial.


And you know something else, Mike? I personally have already screened 
some 12,000 braconid species names in my own database, each annotated as 
to which ones are adjectives. If I share that database online, that's 
12,000 names that no braconid researcher like you would ever need to 
*research* again. In fact, I've already personally screened over 200,000 
valid animal names, and have them all databased. If one person can do 
10% of all existing names in their spare time, then this task is *not* 
going to be that hard to accomplish if people get serious.


THAT is what technology is for, to make our lives easier. We *don't* 
want to abandon gender agreement, but to make it trivial to adhere to. 
It's called "having our cake and eating it, too".


I will point out that the proposal to revert every name ever published 
back to its original spelling would be the absolute most disruptive 
thing one can possibly advocate. Why? Because many of the oldest taxon 
names, for many of the most well-known taxa, were originally spelled 
differently than they are now, and have been that way for centuries. 
With the exception of lepidopterists, the results of reverting to 
original spellings for all taxa would be *catastrophic* for everyone 
else, suddenly changing the spellings of tens of thousands of names. 
*The scientific community would revolt, and rightly so*. Let's not ever 
bring up that proposal again.


It's also absurd to claim that we could "lock in place" all the epithets 
as they are spelled right now. Why? Because in order to do that, we 
would need to have a single, official, permanent online registry that 
contains all organismal names as they are presently spelled. If we 
already *had* such a registry containing all names, then we could use it 
instead to *maintain* gender agreement, as I'm proposing; the only tool 
that would make locking all names in place possible is the *exact same 
tool* that we could use to keep gender agreement viable.


Let's stop arguing and just cooperate to build that tool. I've already 
done 10% of it myself, and I'm just doing insect names. There are 
*already* authoritative lists for MANY other taxa, they just need to be 
updated to include genders of genera, and declinability of epithets, to 
be brought up to speed. Let's shut the skeptics up once and for all.


Peace,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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