gender in species names

[Doug Yanega]

Gary Anweiler wrote:

>I see that a lot of noctuid names (and others ?)  that previously 
>ended in "a" (Euxoa terrena, E. tronella) are now showing up ending 
>in "us" (E. tronellus etc.). Can anyone tell me what this is based 
>on and what is the correct current use. 

Unless I am mistaken, this is evidently because a number of 
lepidopterists have unilaterally rebelled against the ICZN rules of 
nomenclature, and decided to simply use the original spellings of 
epithets regardless of which genus they are presently placed in 
(including, for example, the entirety of Poole & Gentili's 1996 
"Nomina Insecta Nearctica" catalog). The *correct* current use is, 
sadly, what the Code dictates, which is that Greek or Latin 
adjectival epithets must agree with the gender of the genus. The 
trick, as always, is knowing which epithets are adjectives and must 
agree, and which are nouns (or not Greek or Latin at all), and thus 
invariant. In the case you give, "terren-" is adjectival (meaning 
"earthy"), so MUST be Euxoa terrena. Likewise for E. cinereopallida, 
and fuscigera.

However, "tronellus" is, as best as I can determine, either a made-up 
word, or a noun meaning "a small tool" (though to be correctly 
formed, it would apparently have to be "tronellum", as the root 
"tron" is neuter). Either way, it should *probably* be left as 
"tronellus" regardless of its generic placement, since it was 
originally formed *as* "tronellus" (the rule, in Code Art. 31.2.2 and 
31.2.3 indicates that if you don't know whether it's a noun or 
adjective, or if it's not Greek or Latin, you leave it alone). The 
same applies to Euxoa vallus; "vallum" means wall, so the name 
appears to be an incorrectly-formed noun, and probably also E. 
servitus (properly, it should be "servat-" - there is no Greek or 
Latin term or root "servit-", and if it isn't Greek or Latin, it 
doesn't need to agree with the genus). Of course, nothing replaces 
reading the original description, and seeing what the author said 
when it was coined. Not surprisingly, all three of these 
incorrectly-formed names are the product of the same author, which 
suggests he was just making up names that he thought *sounded* Greek 
or Latin. Anyone have Smith's original descriptions handy?

That, of course, is WHY people like Poole and others have decided to 
abandon the Code: because it's a pain in the (*#^@*& to have to drag 
out a Greek/Latin glossary every time one looks at a catalog of 
names. It is also, however, why people like myself are advocating a 
master Registry of all scientific names (called ZooBank), where - in 
order to Register a name - part of the entry for every epithet is an 
explicit statement of whether it needs to agree with the genus (or 
not), and if so, how it should be spelled in each of the three 
possible cases. That way, no one would ever have to look it up or 
argue about it ever again; we can have gender agreement without 
having to do detective work for each and every name ourselves - just 
look it up in the Registry, and it tells you right there (each genus 
would obviously also be Registered, with its gender indicated). It's 
called "working within the rules" and it's a better option than 
simply doing whatever one feels like.

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0314
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/private/leps-l/attachments/20060309/c3023ce0/attachment.html