Taxonomic practice, creativity and fashion: what's in a spider name?

Autor: Stefano Mammola, Nathan Viel, Dylan Amiar, Atishya Mani, Christophe Hervé, Stephen B. Heard, Diego Fontaneto, Julien Pétillon
Přispěvatelé: Helsingin yliopisto = Helsingfors universitet = University of Helsinki, Ecosystèmes, biodiversité, évolution [Rennes] (ECOBIO), Université de Rennes (UR)-Institut Ecologie et Environnement (INEE), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers de Rennes (OSUR), Université de Rennes (UR)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université de Rennes 2 (UR2)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université de Rennes 2 (UR2)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of New Brunswick (UNB), Nelson Mandela University [Port Elizabeth], European Union [882221], European Project: 8822214(1989), Finnish Museum of Natural History
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2023, ⟨10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac097⟩
ISSN: 0024-4082
1096-3642
DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac097⟩
Popis: There’s a secret pleasure in naming new species. Besides traditional etymologies recalling the sampling locality, habitat, or morphology of the species, etymologies may be tributes to some meaningful person (for example, the species’ collector, the author’s husband or wife, or a celebrity), pop culture references, and even exercises of enigmatography. The possibility of choosing witty or even playful names for new species departs from the otherwise impersonal and old-fashioned writing style that’s common in taxonomic papers; but, how has the descriptor’s choice for specific etymologies changed over the 300+ years since the introduction of the Linnaean binomial system of nomenclature? Using an unprecedented dataset of 48,464 etymologies (all valid species and subspecies of spiders described between 1757 and May 2020), we tested the hypothesis that species names given by taxonomists are deeply influenced by their cultural background. In particular, we asked whether naming practices change through space (continent in which the species was found) or have changed through time (year of description). We observed spatial and temporal differences in the way taxonomists name new species. In absolute terms, etymologies referring to morphology were the most frequently used. In relative terms, however, references to morphology peaked in 1850–1900 and then began to decline, with a parallel increase in etymologies dedicated to people and geography. Currently, these are the most widely used, with ∼38% of all etymologies of spider species described in the last ten years referring to geography, ∼25% to people, and ∼25% to morphology. Interestingly, there has been a dramatic increase in etymologies referring to pop culture and other cultural aspects in the last two decades, especially in Europe and the Americas. While such fashionable names often carry little or no biological information regarding the species itself, they help give visibility to the science of taxonomy, a discipline currently facing a profound crisis within academia. Taxonomy is among the most unchanged disciplines across the last centuries in terms of background, tools, rules, and writing style; but our analysis suggests that taxonomists remain deeply influenced by their living time and space.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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