Taxacom: Abbreviations in species descriptions

[Peter Uetz]

A lot of recent species descriptions, at least in reptiles, use a variety of abbreviations.
I wonder how common that is in other taxonomic groups, and more importantly, if there are any (published) standards for such abbreviations.

For instance, in reptiles, common abbreviations include SVL (for snout-vent length) but there seems only limited agreement on others, 
e.g. for snout length people have used SL or SnL, or more precisely eye-to-snout-distance (ESD) = snout-to-eye-distance (SE), etc.
Of course, SL can actually can also mean other things, such as supralabial scale (count) etc.

Thanks!


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Peter Uetz
Center for Biological Data Science
Virginia Commonwealth University
Richmond, VA 23284
USA

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