Taxacom: demystifying gender agreement ( was Re: Removals of offending scientific names)

Thu Jun 22 22:37:44 CDT 2023

I am not as acquainted with all the experts out there that have commented
on this issue, but for the World Catalogue of Hepialidae (hopefully
published within a week or two at most) the authors followed a precedent
set by some past major players in hepialid taxonomy and used the original
form of the species name, regardless of whether correct in the first place,
or now in a genus with a different gender. Keeps life simple, and as far as
I am concerned, quite comprehensible. When it comes to new names, I try to
get the gender correctly aligned (caveat on those genera for which the
original gender was unknown) although quite happy if the gender agreement
was not seen as a necessity. After all, it's just a label, not a language
(as far as I am personally concerned that is).

Cheers, John (a simple minded taxonomist)

On Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 11:05 PM Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

>  It will be interesting to hear what Rich has to say about ZooBank, but,
> speaking as someone who has had editor rights on ZooBank for several years
> now, I'd like to comment from my perspective. Of course, Rich might have
> some major changes to ZooBank infrastrucure in the pipeline taht I don't
> know about, but, as it is, I don't think ZooBank is really fit for the task
> of a comprehensive source of reliable data on ICZN compliant genera. There
> is too much duplication and not enough legacy names being added. Anyone can
> add names and they sometimes make really cringworthy errors when trying to
> add information to fields. For example, some people, when they see a title
> field, after an author field for a publication, especially when they are
> the author, tend to add to the "title" field things like Dr., Prof., Mr.,
> etc.! All these things can be fairly easily corrected on a case by case
> basis, but quite how such error checking could be upscaled to hundreds of
> thousands of records, I'm not sure!
> Over to you, Rich!
> Stephen
>     On Friday, 23 June 2023 at 02:49:56 pm NZST, Tony Rees via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
>  Apologies for a couple of typos in my message above - for "king" read
> "kind", for "Global Naes" read "Global Names"... I am hopeful that readers
> would make these corrections intuitively, as well!
>
> - Tony
>
> On Fri, 23 Jun 2023 at 12:45, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Doug Yanega wrote:
> >
> > > we are actually not
> > >  that far from being able to compile a master list of the genders of
> all
> > >  available genus names - uBio alone has an almost complete list, for
> > >  example, though lacking gender designations.
> >
> > As I understand it, that was indeed uBio's original vision (see David
> > Patterson, "Progressing towards a biological names register", 2003,
> > https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2F422661a&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C1578e094307149314bf708db739b4cb9%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230883083358683%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=yq9lqDkPobefF0RRaX6zxCnbsQHMR2b8q%2FdkjVE9jEE%3D&reserved=0 ), but like many such projects
> it
> > seems to have foundered in the early 2010s or so for the usual reasons
> > (departure of key principals, cessation of funding or institutional
> > support, etc. etc.). Also to my knowledge, the uBio Namebank data
> > compilation never did really grapple with the issue of deduplication
> (i.e.,
> > multiple namestrings per actual taxon "name" depending on the source/s
> used
> > for data acquisition) and in addition may have contained a mix of "clean"
> > and "dirty" data (literature misspellings, etc.)
> >
> > Meanwhile as some may know, I have had an interest in "all genera
> > index[es]" for some time, indeed have been constructing such a resource
> > since 2006 or thereabouts, the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine
> > Genera, see https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irmng.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C1578e094307149314bf708db739b4cb9%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230883083514911%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Kv%2FiJQ4zulLx3W7pAO4YQTgokHNi0sBSNe5iP7Y2v1g%3D&reserved=0 ... "my" compendium being fairly
> > complete (see 2020 Megataxa paper entitled "All Genera of the World...")
> > but not an officially sanctioned or scrutinized registry of any king. On
> > the other hand ZooBank and/or GNUB, the Global Naes Usage Bank, is set up
> > to provide such an "official" function so could form the basis of what
> you
> > envisage, provided it were populated to similar degree with relevant
> genus
> > level content.
> >
> > So maybe we can now await input from Rich Pyle from the viewpoint of
> > ZooBank/GNUB, etc...
> >
> > Regards - Tony
> >
> > Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
> > https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fabout.me%2FTonyRees&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C1578e094307149314bf708db739b4cb9%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230883083514911%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=tuxBwrcDIIQQtQcMiRpwQIjZ%2B3odIhqSKyfkiwbHfY4%3D&reserved=0
> >
> >
> > On Fri, 23 Jun 2023 at 07:32, Douglas Yanega via Taxacom <
> > taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm back from lunch and have a little more time to respond to George
> >> Beccaloni's comment that adhering to gender agreement rules is
> >> "irritating".
> >>
> >> First, I actually agree - but only to a point, and only in a certain
> >> context.
> >>
> >> That context is one which would seem to be what George was describing;
> >> one in which an individual taxonomist, operating solely with their own
> >> "at hand" resources to guide them, is confronted with a situation where
> >> the only way forward is for them to PERSONALLY decide which species
> >> names must be changed, and how to change them.
> >>
> >> In that very specific context, I *absolutely* agree that adhering to
> >> gender agreement is not just irritating, but a time-consuming burden,
> >> potentially necessitating deep dives into obscure grammatical and
> >> linguistic "rabbit holes", and sometimes not even leading to clear and
> >> objective answers. This is a terrible and unfair burden for taxonomists,
> >> who generally have better things they can be doing with their time.
> >>
> >> That being said, the difficulty is - as I noted before - not something
> >> INHERENT in gender agreement. The problem is the concept that every
> >> taxonomist has to make these decisions, and do the research, and worry
> >> about linguistics, BY THEMSELVES. It does not need to be this way, and I
> >> feel it SHOULD not be this way. We can do better, and make it so the
> >> process is no longer irritating.
> >>
> >> There are two things that can free individual taxonomists from the
> >> irritation and burden of complying with gender agreement while *still
> >> allowing* gender agreement to continue as a practice - a practice which
> >> is, in fact, essential to nomenclatural stability.
> >>
> >> (1) The first thing is, as I said, designing our digital
> >> taxonomic/nomenclatural resources so they are "intelligent" enough to be
> >> able to perform *one* *incredibly simple task*: matching a gender entry
> >> in one field (a genus-linked field) with another gender entry in an
> >> "alternative spelling of species name" field. Basically, if the genus
> >> entry is listed as "Feminine", e.g., then it links to and displays the
> >> "Feminine" spelling variant for any species name linked to that genus.
> >> We *can* do this, and there are a number of existing resources that
> >> *already* do. That's the *easy* part to demystify.
> >>
> >> (2) The second thing comes naturally to most people's minds when they
> >> are told they could automate gender agreement: "That doesn't tell me
> >> which names to enter in the database as having variable spellings, and
> >> which names only can ever have one spelling, nor does it tell me which
> >> genus names are which genders." This is a more significant issue, and I
> >> freely admit that an actual solution is not going to be simple. However,
> >> a solution is possible, and I think it is highly desirable, and maybe
> >> even necessary. Namely, we create two resources: a single master
> >> registry of all available genus-rank names *that includes their genders
> >> *(as established by the rules in the Code), plus a single standard
> >> adjectival lexicon that indicates which species names (or name suffixes)
> >> are ALWAYS adjectival with variant spellings, and which names are in the
> >> very small subset that can be *either* nouns or adjectives depending on
> >> whether the coining author explicitly specified the etymology (with, for
> >> each such name, an appropriate default). Any name *not* listed in the
> >> lexicon would be treated as having invariant spelling.
> >>
> >> The rationale for having a single master registry of genus names is to
> >> prevent disputes and debates and - most importantly - redundancy of
> >> effort. There is no reason for hundreds of taxonomists to have to
> >> independently research the gender of a genus name. The sensible thing to
> >> do is to compile a list from existing resources, and have a small group
> >> of Code-conversant people review all of the disputable names on the
> >> list, and resolve all those disputes permanently. Make the list public,
> >> and permanent.
> >>
> >> The rationale for a single standard lexicon is basically the same: to
> >> put an end to confusion, indecision, and controversy, as well as
> >> redundancy of effort. For example, in Latin, the word "alba" is both a
> >> noun and an adjective, but in the history of nomenclature, it has only
> >> ever been used as an adjective (to my knowledge). This should not be
> >> subject to debate or revisionism: "alba", "albus", and "album" should
> >> all be treated as adjectives EVEN IF the coining author happened, by
> >> some miracle, to have explicitly stated otherwise. Otherwise, things
> >> would be too confusing, given how common these epithets are in both
> >> plants and animals. This decision should only need to be made once, not
> >> subject to "second-guessing", and made fully public and adhered to by
> >> all taxonomists. It's a burden for an individual taxonomist to have to
> >> look through two books and five online resources to figure out whether
> >> "alba" is a noun or an adjective, but it's trivial if they only need to
> >> look at a SINGLE resource, type in the name "alba", and be told
> >> *unambiguously* that for nomenclature it is an adjective, and ONLY an
> >> adjective, AND what the alternative spellings are.
> >>
> >> The important point I would like to make, for those of you who are
> >> rolling your eyes or shaking your heads, is that we are actually not
> >> that far from being able to compile a master list of the genders of all
> >> available genus names - uBio alone has an almost complete list, for
> >> example, though lacking gender designations - and the number of
> >> disputable cases is a very small subset of that total, so assigning each
> >> genus name a definitive *and irrevocable* gender is entirely feasible.
> >> The overwhelming majority of genus names are unambiguously assignable
> >> under the Code. We are, admittedly, not as close to having a list of all
> >> existing adjectival species names, but there *are* exhaustive digital
> >> lexicons of Latin and Greek adjectives that could be adapted to our
> >> needs. The subset of those terms that are disputable under the Code is
> >> perhaps a bit larger, but still not entirely unmanageable. I've spent
> >> over 10 years going over the names of insects, and out of over 200,000
> >> valid insect species-rank names, only about 8% are disputable, and a
> >> *very* high percentage of those are duplicates (e.g., 1100 of the 16000
> >> disputable names I have recorded are those ending in "-cola", "-colus",
> >> or "-colum"). So, even this particular task, of an "official list" of
> >> species names, is attainable.
> >>
> >> The bottom line is that I would ask people to reconsider their
> >> opposition to gender agreement, if the only reasons you oppose it are
> >> the issues that would be resolved by having access to the resources
> >> described above.
> >>
> >> Specifically, if the scenario I describe were to become reality - having
> >> smarter databases, and being provided with official lists - are there
> >> people here who would *still* advocate that we reject gender agreement?
> >> If so, why?
> >>
> >> Sincerely,
> >>
> >> --
> >> 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)
> >>              https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.ucr.edu%2F~heraty%2Fyanega.html&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C1578e094307149314bf708db739b4cb9%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638230883083514911%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=odCBswmYsWot%2BfIEIZq3ge4noReaA7UvsnrfKs1p%2BTw%3D&reserved=0
> >>    "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
> >>          is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
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> >>
> >> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for
> >> about 36 years, 1987-2023.
> >>
> >
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> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for
> about 36 years, 1987-2023.
>
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>
> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for
> about 36 years, 1987-2023.
>

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