Taxacom: Biston betularia moth names

[John Grehan]

A colleague sent me a copy of the following:
Cook, L.M. & Muggleton, J. 2003. The peppered moth, Biston betularia
(Linnaeus, 1758) (Lepidoptera: Geometridae): a matter of names. The
Entomologist's Gazette 54: 211-221.

Below is an excerpt of the conclusion section concerning gender agreement.
This is from a few years back, so nothing particularly new here. Gender
agreement is the one aspect of the Code that I have not followed in my
group of study (Hepialidae) - with only one exception to my recollection
where a gender agreement form is well established as the accepted name in
New Zealand. This decision followed that of Ebbe Schmidt Nielsen (2000) for
the group, and to avoid the nightmare of trying to establish a consistency
of names where the gender of some genera is unknown or ambiguous, and
especially where I was involved in a substantial number of generic
reassignments of species. I don't know if this paper is open access, but if
not and anyone wants a copy just let me know.

Cheers, John Grehan

"Regulation does, however, bring its own problems. The intention of the Code
of Zoological Nomenclature is admirable. It is essential to have such a
system in
taxonomy if we are to be able to refer precisely to a particular species.
When
many species are considered in taxonomic works, the Code must be adhered to
exactly. In a group such as the British Macrolepidoptera, however, there are
almost no difficult taxonomic questions, and nearly all species have well
known
common names. Nevertheless, for various bookkeeping reasons their scientific
names are continually changing, sometimes as fast as the species themselves
are evolving. Thus, Gonodontis bidentata (Clerck, 1759) showed a
distinctive pattern of melanism across north-west England in the 1970s
(Bishop et al., 1978), now changing in Odontopera bidentata (Cook et al.,
2002). Lees (1971) established the distribution of melanism in Britain in
Phigalia pedaria (Fabricius) in the late 1960s. Studies of this species,
under the name Phigalia pilosaria ([Denis & Schiffermiiller]), 1775) showed
that it did not much alter in the Midlands over the next decade (Lees,
1981) but Apocheima pilosaria is now showing a definite decline in melanic
frequency (Cook, Riley & Woiwod, 2002). The example of the Peppered Moth
illustrates well the fact that agreement in gender performs no useful
function in a world where the genus names regularly change. Moreover, it
may generate arcane problems that are of no relevance to biology.
If Treitschke had intended Amphidasys when he named the genus, but misspelt
it, it would have been masculine. If the version he used was a
deliberate latinization, however, it becomes feminine. The difference in
treatment by Staudinger in the two references quoted suggests that he was
conscious of this problem. We have no way, and no reason, to know what
Treitschke thought and in a multilingual world that does not presume
knowledge of Latin and classical Greek it is time to let the rule on
agreement go. There are hundreds of papers on melanism in the Peppered
Moth, its frequency about the country, its progressive change and its
genetics. Nomenclatural usage in them, in Britain at any rate, has its
origin in Ford (1937). Despite the manifest incorrectness of betularia and
the oddity of choosing carbonaria, we suggest that these two names should
continue in use for this particular body of literature."