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

Sun Jun 25 16:02:45 CDT 2023

Dear Jean-Michel,
These are not gender issues, but spelling issues. Their regulations 
would remain untouched as they are now.

Francisco

Am 25.06.2023 um 18:20 schrieb Jean Michel Maes via Taxacom:
> 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
> Morpho Residency
> De Hielera CELSA media cuadra arriba
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> NICARAGUA
> 
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> 
> Pronto el correo jmmaes at ibw.com.ni dejara de funcionar.
> 
> 
> -----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 names will be costly and difficult, and gender agreement is an outdated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)
>>                https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.ucr.edu%2F~heraty%2Fyanega.html&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Cc3c18707d9b645cca33f08db75bf842a%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638233237653979852%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=vcgZ%2BTVf%2FOduRD519BjLCPq51ZfPxpQBmaoaPHt9QY0%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
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> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for
> about 36 years, 1987-2023.
> 
> 