Facts on Scientific Names of Organisms

Ant writes "From my ant message board thread (trying to pick names related to ants for World of Warcraft), Myrmecos mentioned Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature that lists scientific names of organisms are not usually known for their entertainment value. They are indispensable for clarity in communication, but most people skip over them with barely a glance. Mark Isaak, the author, collected those names that are worth a second look. Some names are interesting for what they are named after (for example, Arthurdactylus conandoylensis, Godzillius), some are puns (La cucaracha, Phthiria relativitae), and some show other kinds of wordplay (such as the palindromic Orizabus subaziro). Some have achieved notability through accident of history, and many show the sense of humor of taxonomists."

Comments

Re:Heres one

[ptlis]

I don't think that /.ers have an aversion to women, it's the women who have an aversion to us!

Re:Scientists and Subproverbial Proverbs

[toxcspdrmn]

Well - I guess you just answered your own question :-)

Okay - I'll bite for the benefit of the non-biologists (and yes - IAAB).

The second word is more correctly the "specific" or "trivial" epithet. I used "species" in my post to make the point that the generic and specific epithets are always single words.

In other words, not only is the binomial system case sensitive, but it uses spaces only to separate epithets. Also it is font sensitive (I might have my terminology wrong here) in that only generic, subgeneric, specific and subspecific epithets are italicised - or underlined when italics are not available.

Incidentally a couple of handy mnemonics for remembering the major taxa are:

King Phillip Collects Old Familiar Girls' Suspenders

or

Kindly Put Condom On For Great Sex

to remember

Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species