Social Butterfly + another angle on Common names

[Mark Walker]

What a wonderful use of this medium.

Thanks, Doug.  I just know there are many people out there who subscribed
hoping to get this sort of info.  Too bad "we" don't offer it more
frequently.

Mark Walker
(still raining down here...)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stelenes at aol.com [mailto:Stelenes at aol.com]
> Sent: Friday, January 14, 2000 9:14 AM
> To: ld001h at mail.rochester.edu; leps-l at lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Social Butterfly + another angle on Common names
> 
> 
> >>But who is this Linne?  Is he some sort of entomologist?  What's the
> >>"senior name"?  This is stuff is confusing to me;  I'm 
> quite uninitiated.
> 
> >>-- Louis
> 
> Linné is the common name for Carolus Linnaeus who was also 
> known as Karl 
> Linné.  He's the Swedish guy who started the scientific 
> naming system using 
> Latin words in the 1735.  In 1761 he was knighted by the 
> Swedish Royal family 
> and made his name change official to Carl von Linné.  
> However, Linnaeus is 
> the senior scientific name!
> 
> His system is called a binomial naming because Linneaus 
> proposed a complete 
> name has a 'genus' and a 'species'.  He also proposed higher 
> orders of 
> organization like Lepidoptera (Order), Insecta (Class), 
> Kingdom (Animalia).  
> Or for example, also: Kingdom - Animal; Class - Vertebrates; Order - 
> Primates: (Genus species): Homo sapiens for ourselves, 
> commonly known as: 
> Man, Mankind, Humankind, Smart Homonid, People, etc. (Perhaps 
> someone will 
> decide we should have a Standardized Common Name. - the word 
> standardized is 
> key here since all common names are valid, but that is 
> another thread in the 
> group, in case this happens, I propose: Common Homo, after 
> mulling over 
> Birding and NABA logic).
> 
> Linneaus was a taxonomist.  He is often considered the father 
> of taxonomy.  
> Though Aristotle has a claim to that title, too.  I am not 
> sure if Linneaus 
> considered himself specifically an entomologist, he loved 
> botany and became a 
> physician because he didn't want to disappoint his Mom and 
> Dad (A priest and 
> gardener, who was sad his son didn't take the high road).  We 
> should consider 
> him a Lepidopterist too, since he gave all kinds of organisms 
> names including 
> lots of beautiful butterflies from the Old World and the New, 
> in his 10th 
> edition of the book, Systema Naturæ.  His work was in Latin 
> since it was the 
> prevailing scientific language at the time. 
> 
> 'Senior' and 'Junior' in this case are science talk for Latin 
> names made up 
> by the first person to describe the butterfly or its genus.  
> The way a 
> scientist 'invents' a scientific name is by publishing it in 
> a scientific 
> magazine.  Once upon a time before the age of communication, 
> internet and 
> photography and during longer publication cycles, different 
> scientists could 
> have been in a situation where they published their names for 
> the same 
> organism or genus.  So whoever published first gets credit 
> for the name and 
> that name beats out any subsequent or 'junior' names 
> published later.  
> 
> Now in the age of internet it is questionable whether Leps-L 
> is sufficiently 
> scientific to 'publish' a name of a new species here.  Also, 
> as the consensus 
> of butterfly scientists learns more, one butterfly can be 
> lumped as the same 
> species as another (then the name becomes subject to the 
> senior name), in 
> which case the newer name gets tossed.  Or a butterfly can be 
> split and a new 
> scientific name given to the new species which previously was 
> thought to be 
> just a form or "subspecies" of the other.  Also, the 
> scientist who describes 
> it first forever gets associated with it.  To Illustrate this 
> we are Homo 
> sapiens (Linneaus, 1758), if Linneaus first described us to 
> taxonomy in 1758. 
>  But generally, you don't see the (Linneaus), (L), or (Linne) 
> following our 
> species (assuming Linneaus was the one), as is the custom for 
> many scientists 
> for other species.  Perhaps because we subconsciously 
> consider ourselves 
> above Leps and other organisms to reference a discoverer or 
> namer of our 
> species.  Or a more homocentric view: We are well known so no 
> reference is 
> needed.  Maybe - unless we are lumped with some apes.  
> Finally, if no one 
> thought to give Common Homo a standardized name before, the 
> same rules 
> applied to senior/junior to standardized common names as do 
> to scientific 
> names, and Leps-L were sufficiently scientific, then folks 
> would be stuck 
> with Common Homo as a name.  (If the Amymone or Di-morphic 
> Bark Wing could 
> speak.) 
> 
> About your first question, one real social butterfly a tad 
> closer to home is 
> the Lyside (Kricogonia lyside [Godart,1819: Colias lyside.  
> In 1863 Reakirt 
> 'split' the genus and named it Kricogonia which Mark Walker 
> knows how to 
> pronounce]).  If you ever sat in the Texas desert watching 
> them you would see 
> them rapidly forming lines of ten or more butterflies, 
> darting, curving about 
> in follow the leader style among the yucca.  The Eucheira 
> socialis certainly 
> has social caterpillars, so it might be more descriptively 
> named the Social 
> Caterpillar.  While it is the same organism in different 
> parts of the life 
> cycle, butterfly in common usage refers only to the adult 
> winged form of the 
> bug.  I doubt the Eucheira socialis butterfly is social in 
> that sense, but 
> someone more familiar with the species' behavior might comment.
> 
> Another candidate, and in my opinion the most social 
> butterfly is the eternal 
> favorite, Monarch Butterfly [Danaus plexxipus, (Linnaeus, 
> 1758: Papilio 
> plexxipus.;  In 1844, Kluk created Danaus by splitting it 
> from Papilio)].  It 
> is hard to argue that traveling thousands of miles to form 
> clumps of millions 
> of butterflies for months is not the clear winner for social 
> tendencies!
> 
> Hope the babbling is entertaining.  Best wishes and happy 
> butterflying.  Doug 
> Dawn.
> Woodland, CA
> Monterrey, Mexico
> http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/4048/index.html
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks, Chris, and everyone else who responded!  This is 
> exactly what I
> was looking for!
> 
> But who is this Linne?  Is he some sort of entomologist?  What's the
> "senior name"?  This is stuff is confusing to me;  I'm quite 
> uninitiated.
> 
> -- Louis
> 
> Subj:    Re: Scientific name for social butterfly
> Date:   1/13/00 10:36:29 PM Pacific Standard Time
> From:   ld001h at mail.rochester.edu (Louis Deaett)
> Sender: owner-leps-l at lists.yale.edu
> Reply-to:   <A 
> HREF="mailto:ld001h at mail.rochester.edu">ld001h at mail.rochester.e
> du</A>
> To: leps-l at lists.yale.edu
> 
> In article <3.0.5.32.20000113014215.00833d60 at mail.utexas.edu>,
> drdn at mail.utexas.edu wrote:
> 
> > >P.S. There aren't _really_ any social butterflies, are there?
> > >
> > >
> > Oh, yes there are - try *Eucheira socialis* - THE MADRONE 
> BUTTERFLY that
> > lives with its young in tents.
> > 
> > For a conversational term *Papilio socialis* would be 
> appropriate should we
> > choose to sink genera and follow Linne with all the 
> butterflies in one
> > genus under the senior name.
> > .......Chris Durden
>