Taxacom: [KU SUSPECT SPAM] Re: Biston betularia moth names

[lynn]

What exactly is the problem with gender agreement? Lazy taxonomists? Stupid taxonomists incapable of following rules? Surely not! So what is it that needs fixing and why?

Lynn

> On 25 Jan 2022, at 17:09, Robert Zuparko via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
> 
> I'm with John on this. To quote Shakespeare:
> 
> "Oh, to deep-six the need for gender agreement! How much sweeter might the
> world be?"
> I'm not sure which play this was from - maybe one of the Henrys? Or maybe a
> sonnet?.
> 
> -Bob Zuparko
> 
>> On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 7:01 AM John Grehan via Taxacom <
>> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> 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."
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>> 
>> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for about 35 years, 1987-2022.
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Robert Zuparko
> Essig Museum of Entomology
> 1101 Valley Life Sciences Building, #4780
> University of California
> Berkeley, CA 94720-3112
> (510) 643-0804
> 
> It's not a fetish. When a scientist does it, it's an "area of interest." Ze
> Frank, True Facts
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> 
> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for about 35 years, 1987-2022.