Taxacom: Removals of offending scientific names

[Douglas Yanega]

On 6/22/23 11:23 AM, George Beccaloni via Taxacom wrote:
> Having worked on large
> electronic catalogues of names like the Global Lepidoptera Names Index
> (LepIndex) and the Cockroach Species File, I am constantly irritated by the
> name changes caused by gender agreement. Such changes complicate databasing
> and the communication of taxonomic information.
>
Then these catalogues and databases are not well-designed. It is 
entirely feasible to design a digital catalogue to indicate *and 
recognize* all the alternative spellings an adjectival species name can 
have, and (for example) change the spelling *automatically* if a species 
is moved to a genus of a different gender.

The world catalogue of Neuroptera, designed by John Oswald, gives all of 
the forms of all of the adjectival names, for example - for some 6,000 
species. You could potentially do the same for the Cockroach Species 
File, which is slightly smaller than the Neuroptera list.

This is *exactly* the kind of issue that technology can render trivial, 
with a little investment up-front. It is most certainly not a 
justification for protesting that gender agreement is *inherently* 
difficult to comply with. You can design technology to be compatible, 
and make it work a lot more easily.

Peace,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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