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

Sun Jun 25 11:20:40 CDT 2023

If we go back to the gender of the original publication , to get only one
label for each species, what did we do with capitals (Deyrollei), "-"
(Wentzell-Heckmannae) or special characters ?

JM

Dr. Jean-Michel Maes
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-----Mensaje original-----
De: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu] En nombre de George
Beccaloni via Taxacom
Enviado el: viernes, 23 de junio de 2023 10:43
Para: Douglas Yanega
CC: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Asunto: Re: Taxacom: demystifying gender agreement ( was Re: Removals of
offending scientific names)

If species names are just labels/unique identifiers, and the original
published name is the most important, and gender agreement is complex to get
right and is confusing to amateurs etc, and making a massive list of all
names will be costly and difficult, and gender agreement is an outdated
practise from a previous era, and gender agreement might not be regarded as
'inclusive' in this day and age, then its seems like a jolly good idea to
get rid of it and revert to the original published names!

George

****************************************************************************
*Dr George Beccaloni FLS*
*Director, Alfred Russel Wallace Correspondence Project*

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On Fri, 23 Jun 2023 at 17:30, Douglas Yanega via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:

> On 6/22/23 8:37 PM, John Grehan wrote:
> > 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.
>
> In principle, that could be true - about it keeping things simple - 
> but in practice, it does not seem to work that way.
>
> The principle relies on all lepidopterists, and all other taxonomists 
> using lepidopteran names, having access to a single authoritative 
> master list of names (otherwise, people would need to each have access 
> to copies of the original literature). In practice, there are LOTS of 
> different sources for lep names, and they are very commonly in 
> conflict with one another, here and there. The same species can have 
> two different spellings scattered throughout the literature, as well 
> as online sources, and that is not "keeping it simple".
>
> The very first butterfly name I looked up just now - a butterfly I 
> learned as "Mitoura gryneus" several decades ago - is one that stuck 
> in my head as a budding entomologist because it was the very first 
> time in my life I had learned a scientific name that was explained to 
> me as being a gender mismatch, and when I first learned that 
> lepidopterists didn't use gender agreement. The noteworthy thing about 
> it is that if you do a verbatim Google search, you can find hundreds 
> of sources that have "Mitoura gryneus", hundreds more that have 
> "Mitoura grynea", hundreds more that have "Callophrys gryneus", and 
> hundreds more that have "Callophrys grynea".
>
> That does not at all look simple to me, and *that's just the first 
> name I looked up*. I'm willing to wager that if there are other common 
> leps with obvious gender mismatches, that they'll have a very high 
> probability of appearing in the literature with multiple conflicting 
> spellings.
>
> This exemplifies EXACTLY why I advocate for a single authoritative 
> master list. No system of gender agreement, even ZERO gender 
> agreement, is going to ensure that everyone, everywhere, is on the 
> same page unless there is a single shared resource that everyone uses 
> to obtain the proper spelling. When everyone does their own 
> independent research, people can come to different conclusions, 
> leading to inconsistency. If the master list gives the spelling 
> variants, *and tells you when to use which variant*, then there is no
reason not to keep gender agreement.
> Both approaches - keeping gender agreement or abandoning it - at 
> *that* point would require exactly the same amount of effort: typing a 
> name into a search engine linked to a list, and following the result.
>
> It's called "having our cake and eating it too".
>
> 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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>          is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82 
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> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration 
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