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https://theconversation.com/hibberts-flowers-and-hitlers-beetle-what-do-we-do-when-species-are-named-after-historys-monsters-172602>
"“What’s in a name?”, asked Juliet of Romeo. “That which we call a rose by any
other name would smell as sweet.”
But, as with the Montagues and Capulets, names mean a lot, and can cause a
great deal of heartache.
My colleagues and I are taxonomists, which means we name living things. While
we’ve never named a rose, we do discover and name new Australian species of
plants and animals – and there are a lot of them!
For each new species we discover, we create and publish a Latin scientific
name, following a set of international rules and conventions. The name has two
parts: the first part is the genus name (such as
Eucalyptus), which describes
the group of species to which the new species belongs, and the second part is a
species name (such as globulus, thereby making the name
Eucalyptus globulus)
particular to the new species itself. New species are either added to an
existing genus, or occasionally, if they’re sufficiently novel, are given their
own new genus.
Some scientific names are widely known – arguably none more so than our own,
Homo sapiens. And gardeners or nature enthusiasts will be familiar with genus
names such as
Acacia,
Callistemon or
Banksia.
This all sounds pretty uncontroversial. But as with Shakespeare’s star-crossed
lovers, history and tradition sometimes present problems."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
