Taxacom: Abbreviations in species descriptions

[Robert Zuparko]

Abbreviations are commonly used in insect descriptions as well. But often
(in the methods section) a key to the abbreviations is presented.


On Wed, May 25, 2022 at 2:32 PM Peter Uetz via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
wrote:

>
> 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!
>
>
> ————————————————————————————————————
> Peter Uetz
> Center for Biological Data Science
> Virginia Commonwealth University
> Richmond, VA 23284
> USA
>
> Reptile Database (
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> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for about 35 years, 1987-2022.
>
 Abbreviations are quite common in insect descriptions. But a list of the
abbreviations is presented in the methods section, which should assist
anyone not familiar with the group.

-- 
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