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The Fruit Fly Drosophila Gets a New Name
G3ckoG33k writes "The name of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster will change to Sophophora melangaster. The reason is that scientists have by now discovered some 2,000 species of the genus and it is becoming unmanageably large. Unfortunately, the 'type species' (the reference point of the genus), Drosophila funebris, is rather unrelated to the D. melanogaster, and ends up in a distant part of the relationship tree. However, geneticists have, according to Google Scholar, more than 300,000 scientific articles describing innumerable aspects of the species, and will have to learn the new name as well as remember the old. As expected, the name change has created an emotional (and practical) stir all over media. While name changes are frequent in science, as they describe new knowledge about relationships between species, these changes rarely hit economically relevant species, and when they do, people get upset."
Like when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, lay people get upset when the limited amount of science that they have been taught changes. I suspect it is because the media trumpets the claims of science as established fact. Most non-scientists aren't aware of the way the scientific method revisits previous conclusions and is open to the possibility of overturning them.
Is it only in software we care about backwards compatiblity? This new name change will break thousands of studies which now references a fly does not exist. Journalists with only a fleeting aquantaince to biology will be confused about Drosophila melanogaster and its new name which leads to worse science reporting. This seems like gratitious breakage, where if an analysis was made the costs would be found much higher than the benefits.
Football Odds
The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) ruling addressed a request to name D. melanogaster as the type species for the genus. Under the rules of nomenclature, another species in the genus has naming priority. As long as the genus (currently more than 1400 species) remains intact there is no name change for melanogaster. However, the biologist who submitted the petition to protect the name D. melanogaster did so because a revision and splitting of Drosophila is long overdue (and is apparently interested in taking on the project). The ICZN did not make this decision lightly, it has been under review for a couple of years.
"It was very difficult for the commissioners," says Ellinor Michel, the commission's executive secretary. "It was a question of celebrity, as everyone knows D. melanogaster."
That would certainly be awkward...if we lose Drosophila melanogaster, the only full binomial I will know from memory will be Homo sapiens. I'll have to memorize the name Caenorhabditis (of C. elegans fame) or something, and that will truly be a tragedy.
Sophophora was Drosophila
Now it's Sophophora, not Drosophila
Not been a long time gone, Drosophila
Now it's bug filled time on a moonlit night
Every fly that was Drosophila
Lives in Sophophora, not Drosophila
So if you had a fly in Drosophila
It'll be waiting in Sophophora
Even old pluto, was once a planet
Why they changed it I can't say
People didn't like it better that way
So take me back to Drosophila
No, you can't go back to Drosophila
Been a long time gone, Drosophila
Why did Drosophila get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Scientists
Sophophora (Sophophora)
Sophophora (Sophophora)
Even old pluto, was once a planet
Why they changed it I can't say
People didn't like it better that way
Sophophora was Drosophila
Now it's Sophophora, not Drosophila
Not been a long time gone, Drosophila
Why did Drosophila get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Scientists
So take me back to Drosophila
No, you can't go back to Drosophila
Been a long time gone, Drosophila
Why did Drosophila get the works?
That's nobody's business but the scientists
Sophophora
(with apologies to They Might Be Giants)
---
Ryan Fenton
And instead invent new ways to kill the bastards?
Fruit flies seem to spontaneously generate ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation ) in rotten fruit in my kitchen. I think Pasteur fudged some his data when disproving Spontaneous Generation.
Although, scientists are doing their part to get rid of the fruit fly plague. If you are a fruit fly, your mostly likely cause of death will be a fruit fly genetics experiment . . . performed by a scientist!
Or by over-eager high school biology students, massacring hundreds at a time on microscope sacrificial alters.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
As long as they're still known as fruit flies, changing the scientific name shouldn't cause too much confusion. Anybody who really needs to know will easily pick up on the fact that there are two scientific names and eventually the old name will become archaic.
they could just use the IUPAC name of the organisms DNA. of course it might take a while to say such a name...
If they'd stop doing genetic experiments on that poor fly all the time, they wouldn't "discover" so many new species after all.
First Pluto and now fruit flies! What are they going to change next fetal pigs?
My entire high school science knowledge is going down the drain.
But Sophophora melanOgaster.
That is to say, with a dark intestine. But "sophophora" beats me. Definitely not wisdom-bearing. So what is it ? Geeks, help.
This ain't just some fruit fly. This is the fruit fly. The one Thomas Hunt Morgan chose to study.
"In his famous Fly Room at Columbia University Morgan was able to demonstrate that genes are carried on chromosomes and are the mechanical basis of heredity."
(wikipedia). Drosophila melanogaster was also the model organism that was used in studies that led to the discovery of hox genes. And before the best and the brightest flash their union card credentials and poo poo the lay people let's not forget similar memorable fiascoes where scientists themselves refused to get on board with sensible taxonomy name changes. For example in immunology the innate immune system has a glitch in it's taxonomy in the naming conventions of the Complement System where cleaved segments have a truculent anti-intuitive name for one of the segments. An effort was made to have the one segment (C2a) renamed but it hasn't been universally adopted just because that's the way it's always been.
And why the 503 error persisting for more than 5 minutes?
mindbrane
Drosophila melanogaster is THE species - and the only species - that scientists have simply decided to coalesce around and study in comprehensive detail. It has been the species for studying recessive and dominant genes. It is the first species to have its genome sequenced. Etc etc etc. Scientists simply decided long ago that they will get an economy of scale by pooling their papers around this species. It's a little bit similar to the old pool of resources and knowledge in the "Windows" name.
Microsoft could change or drop the name of just about any of its products - except "Windows".
Likewise you can change the name of any species - even Homo Sapiens - except Drosophila melanogaster.
it is the ONE species that has to keep its name.
Which is the genus for button cacti (f.e. the peyote (lophophora williamsii)). What does Sophophora mean? What does Lophophora mean?
A quick Wiki finds they've had since 1939 to change the species name...no point getting their pants in a twist now ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophophora
I fucking hate flies no matter how interesting the name sounds!
These types of name changes have prevented older publications from compiling nicely into modern libraries and vernacular for some time now. I propose we switch to some type of managed form of journalism---let's call it Journalism.NET---where these types of scientific references can be safely ported to new, more up to date word-ware paradigms!
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Even though NCBI taxonomy is not a taxonomic authority, we do seem to be standardising on their taxon IDs for database work. So the real question might be whether we continue to call fruit flies taxon number 7227 or not.
going to change the name of time flies too?
For the record, I also think that Drosophila should be split because having 1450 species in a single genus is simply insanely impractical. Unlike the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature, the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature allows only two ranks (the subgenus and the "group of species") between the genus and the species, so using subdivisions within the genus is not an option, and this means many clades within Drosophila cannot be named as long as it keeps being that large. However, the ICZN does not restrict the number of species per genus at all; people who are happy to keep 1450 species within Drosophila are free to do so.
Adding another layer of ranks might help a lot here.
It's still Brontosaurus to me.
If the naming system was built right you would still see the relationship of different subspecies even when splitting is done.
It probably is an old discussion but I wonder, shouldn't taxonomy use more than 2 names, or perhaps use syllables to indicate relationships?
Is there a numerical system, perhaps like IP dot notation, or something else, that handles this more gracefully? If a numerical system existed that matches the relationships borne out by analysis of dna and the like, then maybe that should be the real base used, and then the latin or whatever names you want can be attached to it like a DNS?
The problem seems to be that as you discover more things, you will have to keep splitting and renaming, and you will lose links and make obsolete old articles that cannot be easily updated. A system that fits the way biology and discovery works should maybe be considered.
Bette Midler, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, and everyone else who covered The Four Lads original from 1953...
It happens in microbiology a lot. Pastuerella pestis became Yersinia pestis ... Bubonic Plague remained the same, and the old studies are still valid. How hard is it to set up a table of equivalents where Yersinia = Pasteurella
Botany has been systematically reclassifying plants by their genome, moving dozens of species, eliminating others.
Why should zoology be immune to change?
It's all just Greek to me!
... feels better, now.
Which half? Seriously. It was the wrong skull on the wrong body, and both parts already had older names applied to them separately. Effectively, Brontosaurus never really existed except as a paleontological chimera.
Or perhaps because of most scientists main interest in it: A fly by any other name would breed as much.
Jeff Goldblum :(
[My emphasis added.] It's Sophophora melanOgaster.
Who claims we don't have the authority to rename the animals after Adam?
that the scientists were being bribed by book-making companies so that everyone will have to shell out their cash to get a correct copy of the book they have that has fruit fly as D. melanogaster
How do fruit flies bear wisdom? More like a craving for bananas.
Sadly for you, that was not ironic at all. http://www.isitironic.com/ironiqs.htm Thanks for the info though!
This is standard operating procedure for systematics and has been for a century or so. It happens all the time. International codes spell out exactly how it all works. Systematists have agreed long ago that this is the way it should be and scientists take it in stride. These scientific names are created and managed to meet specific needs of working scientists. It should be of no more consequence to nonspecialists than changing "cycles per second" to "Hz" or "carbonic acid" to "carbon dioxide" or changes in IUPAC rules.
The horseshoe crab was Limulus polyphemus, then Xiphosura polyphemus, then Limulus polyphemus again.
In 1962 Theodore Savory wrote, in Naming the Living World: "The second belief, apparently held by many, is that a change of name is a serious, almost a catastrophic occurrence, but in everyday life outside the lab this is simply not true; and a biologist may be reminded that both his mother and his wife have survived the same metamorphosis. The third fallacy is that the possession by an organism of two or three [different scientific] names imposes upon biologists that it is beyond their capacities to carry. This could be true only if zoologists, for example, were expected or needed to be familiar with every animal, whereas nearly all active zoologists today are either physiologists, who do not seem to care about nomenclature, or specialists concerned with only one group, large or small but essentially limited."
The scientific names of organisms serve a number of functions. One is to be sure that scientists working worldwide know what organism is being referred to, and avoiding problems with common names such as "daddy long-legs" or "nightingale..." or, for that matter, "fruit fly" which describes at least two different families of insect.
Another is to reflect the systematic relationships of species as best known. As knowledge evolves, names evolve.
Biologists agreed on the best way to handle this long ago. It's not at all analogous to Pluto. There are less than ten planets, and there are over a million species of animals and plants. If you think scientists can get all of them right and never change any of them, think again.
If you write a scientific paper, you have a choice: call it Sophophora melanogaster or Drosophila melanogaster. If you call it Drosophila, likely someone will insist on correcting it, but maybe not. Either way it is not going to be a problem and is not going to cause "chaos in the literature" because everyone who knows the species by its scientific name will know about the change. Nobody is going to get confused. Automated searches will get cross-references just like card catalog did.
And if you're not doing professional science, just go on calling them "fruit flies." Just like "Baltimore orioles."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They conserve names in wide use, even if the names are no longer technically right. People do that all the time in ordinary language, without the benefit of a commission. That's why you're not calling "tea" a "camellia." (The valid name is Camellia sinensis, not Thea sinensis as it once was.)
For some reason, the zoologists have never figured out this obvious solution. There aren't that many names in wide use, and it's easier for the scientists to remember an occasional exception than for millions of people to learn a new word for nothing. It's meaningful to the scientists, but for most people it's just a label and swapping it when the underlying thing is the same is just make(mental)work.
(It frustrated the hell out of me when the astronomers couldn't figure that out either for Pluto. Just give it conserved status. It won't hurt astronomers to remember, "Oh, yes. The one Kuiper Belt Object we're calling a planet." "Planet" is an arbitrary, human-made category. We can do whatever we want with it.)
There have always been entities, classes, and attributes that have multiple accepted names, and there have always been name changes in the face of new understanding or new fashions. Humans are perfectly capable of remembering that, for example, "Apatosaurus" is the proper name for what we used to call "Brontosaurus", or that "canola oil" is a less hackle-raising name for "rapeseed oil". It's our indexing systems and search engines that have problems, and ontological/semantic annotation can solve those problems quite handily.