Federal listings done by common names? / professional society com mon names?

[Mike Quinn]

Chris, 

Unless you can show otherwise, please retract the following statement:

>    The biggest embarrassment in the United States is that our Federal and 
> some state listings of endangered species are done by common name rather 
> than by scientific name.

Every single member of either the plant or animal kingdom listed in the
Federal Register as threatened or endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service is identified by its binomial if not by its trinomial. The most
recent example of this was the petition to list the Miami Blue. I quoted the
first sentence here:

"Federal Register / Vol. 67, No. 2 / Thursday, January 3, 2002 / Proposed
Rules

"SUMMARY: We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), announce a
90-day finding for a petition to list the Miami blue butterfly (Hemiargus
thomasi bethunebakeri) under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as
amended."

Complete Document:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2002_register&doci
d=02-36-filed.pdf

--------------

As for there being "no professional society regulation of common names",
please consider the following.

The Entomological Society of America is the world's largest entomological
society. (I think they have about 8,000 members world wide.) According to
the following notice posted on their web site, they consider their "Common
Names of Insects" to be one of the six "essential core ... publications" for
their society.
 
http://www.entsoc.org/catalog/

Mike Quinn

========original message==================
Subject: Fwd: Re: Deja Vue
From: "Chris J. Durden" <drdn at mail.utexas.edu>
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 10:21:29 -0600

>Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 10:08:23 -0600
>To: mbpi at juno.com
>From: "Chris J. Durden"
>Subject: Re:  Deja Vue
>
>    I agree. Common names (for insects) are nicknames that facilitate
> informal conversation. Like nicknames for people they tend to be 
> unreliable and regional and should have no legal or scientific standing 
> for serious communication. They enrich the language with synonyms and 
> have been part of our culture. There is no governmental regulation of 
> common names. The only thing that comes close is the Dept. of Agriculture 
> list of insects of economic importance. There is no professional society 
> regulation of common names either. There is an attempt by NABA to 
> regulate common names of butterflies by influence of and by their 
> membership. There is a resistance to acceptance of the new-coined NABA 
> names by the professional entomological community. Professional 
> entomologists and most older amateur entomologists do use some common 
> names, but these  names are the traditional ones, and where there is none 
> the scientific species name is used instead.
>    To the professional entomologist, NABA appears to be the tail trying 
> to wag the dog, and we resent these efforts to destabilize our names.
>    The biggest embarrassment in the United States is that our Federal and 
> some state listings of endangered species are done by common name rather 
> than by scientific name. Now where is the expertise or legal clarity in 
> this practice?
>....................Chris Durden

 
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