Taxacom: Biston betularia moth names

Tue Jan 25 11:51:31 CST 2022

In general I can't say whether it's laziness or stupidity (although perhaps
both apply to me :). But in Lepidoptera there has been an
apparent widespread (if not total) consensus not to look for gender
agreement. What I have heard (including from a linguist) is that some
generic names are of unknown gender while others are ambiguous. So I guess
with these problems in mind, many (most? all?) lepidopterists have chosen
stability over a linguist requirement that cannot always be met. In my case
I am clueless about Latin so it would be a minefield. But in 2000 the
lepidopterists Ebbe Schmidt Nielsen, Gaden Robertsnon, and David Wagner
generated a global list of Hepialidae for which gender agreement, for
species reallocated to different genera from the original, was not followed
or attempted. A new World list of Hepialidae (in press) also follows this
same practice. My view is that this is just a case of an arbitrary  choice
- either one prefers to follow gender agreement (even if this is not always
an obvious determination) as in the current code, or one does not.

Cheers, John Grehan

On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 12:01 PM lynn <lynn at afriherp.org> wrote:

> 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.
>