I have a bit of a stomach bug this weekend, so I am thinking about things that don't require so much concentration. A colleague had raised the question of when the term "evolutionary demography" was first used in print, and said that the oldest example he could find was:
Caswell, H. 1985. The evolutionary demography of clonal reproduction. pp. 187-224. In: J. B. C. Jackson, L. W. Buss and R. E. Cook (eds.) Population Biology and Evolution of Clonal Organisms. Yale Univ. Press.
I, currently having more time than brain power, did a little bit of searching, and found this:
Wilbur, H.M. 1975. The Evolutionary and Mathematical Demography of the Turtle Chrysemys picta. Ecology, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Winter), pp. 64-77.
which uses the phrase "evolutionary demography," explicitly in the acknowledgements and implicitly in the title.
Can anyone find an older explicit recorded use of the phrase? If so, the commenter presenting the oldest confirmable example will win a prize: I will personally make a sculpture representing a species of your choosing (excepting diatoms) and send it to you in recognition of your etymological achievement. Comments will be accepted for one month from today, or until I get the first winning example, whichever comes last.
Showing posts with label etymology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label etymology. Show all posts
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Octopuses good, octopi non-existent.
Note to world: the plural of octopus is octopuses, not octopi. I have discussed this with more than one expert on octopuses, and they consistently report that 'octopi' is is just plain wrong. Octopus comes from Greek roots (octi=eight, pous=foot), not Latin. Greek does not pluralize words ending in -us by ending in -i. That is Latin. The old fashioned plural was octipodes, but that went out with dropsy and mammifers.
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