Taxacom: Gender agreement in Lepidoptera

Tue Jan 25 14:23:12 CST 2022

Thanks Martin.  I thought that the van Nieukerken et al (1019) article gave
a good summary of the argument.  I wonder whether the gender agreement
requirement, which requires a very solid understanding of Latin (or
Greek?), is not only hard enough for those with Latin derived languages,
but what about those who are not?  What would it be like in reverse, that
for example the basis for gender agreement originated in China or Japan -
whether anyone outside that language could comprehend let alone sit in
judgment?

A couple of excerpts below:

Although such agreement is still formally required by the Code, most
lepidopterists ceased following the rule many years ago (e.g. Scoble 1999).
The justification for ignoring the rule was
described in detail and defended by Sommerer (2002), who argued strongly
that the original spelling (orthography) be used. This recommendation was
adopted at the General Meeting of the Societas Europaea Lepidopterologica
(SEL) in a resolution proposed at the 13th European Congress of
Lepidopterology in Korsør (Denmark) on June 4, 2002 (the text of which
immediately follows
the paper by Sommerer 2002)

The stance taken by so many lepidopterists has been adopted by some other
zoologists. For example, Welter-Schultes (2012), although providing rules
on how to apply gender agreement or
avoid its necessity, concluded (page 87) “A gender is nothing useful”. In
ornithology, too, a discussion is taking place as to whether gender
agreement is of any use (Schodde and Bock 2016; 2017).
To quote from the first of these papers (page 167): The second point is the
sheer mind-numbing, time-consuming complexity of determining gender for
species-group names in zoological nomenclature. This is also the single
greatest source of regulation-driven change in the spelling of
species-group names, often disruptively so.

These are precisely the reasons why the vast majority of lepidopterists
long ago decided to use original spellings. To apply gender agreement
correctly, not only is it necessary to determine the
correct gender of the generic name, which is far from straightforward in
many cases, but often it is even more difficult to ascertain whether the
species epithet is an adjective or participle, which
both can be declined, or a (composite) noun. The number of errors caused by
this latter problem is huge, which is understandable both because most
modern taxonomists have no training in Latin
or Greek, and because many names can be easily interpreted in different
ways. Such difficulties are particularly prominent in Lepidoptera, given
that many artificial names sometimes are not
Latin adjectives but rather composite nouns, e.g. those ending in the
suffixes -ella, -ellus, -ellum (Huemer 1988).

On Tue, Jan 25, 2022 at 1:31 PM Martin Wiemers via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> To John & those of you who are interested in the issue of gender
> agreement in Lepidoptera, here is a recent article on the subject (which
> advocates NOT to apply gender agreement in Lepidoptera):
>
>
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.3897%2Fnl.42.34187&data=04%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C19e92c2443f84f8790c408d9e0409901%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637787390318230461%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=mHS9AJftMCHfWE024rQV23SDehuIRVTcLbAKnfGNC6E%3D&reserved=0
> (open access)
>
> Best wishes, Martin
>
> Am 25.01.2022 um 18:51 schrieb John Grehan via Taxacom:
> > 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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> >>
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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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> >>
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> >>> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for about 35 years,
> 1987-2022.
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> > Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for about 35 years, 1987-2022.
>
> --
> Dr. Martin Wiemers
> Head of Ecology
> Senckenberg Deutsches Entomologisches Institut
> Eberswalder Str. 90
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> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for about 35 years, 1987-2022.
>