Rare or Threatened and relative abundance status

[Eric or Pat Metzler]

Chris,

I'm not sure about the word scarce.  As for moths, my forte, we don't know
enough to know if they are really rare or not anyway, so the phrase
infrequently seen is accurate as well avoiding all legal trappings (pun
intended).

Why don't you try your words out on some friends and see what kind of
reactions you get.  In the past couple of years I've told many friends about
my avoidance of the word rare.  I get mixed reactions from incredulity to
might work.

And some of my co-authors like the word rare.  When I'm junior author, the
word rare is sometimes still used.  I'm not going to lose sleep over it.

Cheers,

Eric

"Chris J. Durden" <drdn at mail.utexas.edu> wrote in message
news:5.1.0.14.0.20010725205315.02ace760 at pop3.norton.antivirus...
> Is it safe to use "scarce" for a resident species that is infrequently
> found, or does this word also have another definition in legal or
> specialized jargon?
>    From now on I shall limit my use of "rare" to "var.s" and "ab.s" like
> the melanic *Speyeria* from BC that was shown us recently.
>
> At 09:17 AM 7/25/2001 -0400, you wrote:
> >Dear Vratislav Richard Eugene Maria John Baptist
> >
> >Your questions are excellent, and deserve full exploration by us and all
> >field bioloists.
> >
> >I offer one caveat to Michael Gochfeld's highly informative and very
> >accurate answer.  He's absolutely correct about the definitions.  In many
> >cases the distinctions drawn by Goldfeld do not exist.  There are two
views,
> >the academic, and the view practiced in the field.  The views practiced
in
> >the field, unfortunately, blur the distinctions he offers.
>
>
>
>
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