Genus species

When writing the genus and species of an organism, the genus name is capitalized, but the species name is not. Also note that both are usually italicized to differentiate them from common names.

Right: Homo sapiens
Wrong: Homo Sapiens, homo sapiens, Homo sapiens

This is a long established rule that is consistently followed by scientists but generally ignored by many science reporters and other non-scientists. It becomes very useful when taxonomic level could be unclear.

For example, the extant members of Bison are bison (the American bison) and bonasus (the European bison, or wisent). While bison has been out of immediate risk of extinction for some decades, bonasus populations remain small and have started to rise only recently in captivity and intensely managed reserves. Commercially available bison meat is bison. It is more commonly sold as buffalo meat, although the term buffalo is more properly used for Syncerus and Bubalus, rather than Bison.

It is prefered, but not in all contexts, that in scientific writing one put the abbriviated genus name ahead of the species name. This is done in part because many genera have identically named species. For example, Dendrocopos major, Parus caeruleus and Parus major are all birds of Europe. While P. major is clearly in Parus, P. caeruleus is sometimes placed in Cyanistes.

Taxonomically not what you eat

One should be cautious in naming a taxonomic group for their ecological habits.

I offer you these examples:

1. Most turtles are amphibious; all are reptiles, not amphibians. Turtles have scales, lay hard leathery eggs, have the physiological and genetic makeup of reptiles. I often see phrases such as, "turtles and other Amphibians" in writing about biology by non-scientists. The taxonomic term 'amphibians' is not helpful in getting across to people that turtles are reptiles.

2. Consider the Carnivora. Most Carnivora are carnivores, but some, such as the giant panda, eat largely plants. Further, many carnivorous mammals are not Carnivora in the taxonomic sense. Unnecessarily confusing.

3. Pity the poor Insectivora. It turns out things are worse than just dietary nonconformity (not all the Insectivora ate insects, and not all insectivorous mammals were called Insectivora). The group called Insectivora no longer exists! Biologists had assumed that similarities in diet and morphology among the moles, shrews, tree shrews, golden moles, hedgehogs, moonrats, solenodons, tenrecs, elephant shrews and colugos were the result of common descent (they all had these traits because they were all closely related to each other). It is now clear that Insectivora was an ecological rather than taxonomic grouping. This is because modern molecular genetic and phylogenetic methods make clear that most of these Insectivores are not any more closely related to each other than they are to you, or to an elephant. Specifically, the moles, shrews, solodons, hedgehogs and moonrats form one group, whose closest relatives include the carnivores and hoofed mammals. The tree shrews and culogos (of southeast Asia) are more closely related to the primates. The golden moles, tenrecs and elephant shrews (all African groups) are related to larger mammals found in Africa such as the aardvarks and elephants.

4. The Caprimulgidae (Latin for goat suckers), do not suck goats. They were named for a feeding behavior falsely attributed to them. They are in fact insectivores.

name for a principle?

There is a principle that I want to refer to in an upcoming talk, but I can't find a name for it. Someone must have named it after themselves by now. It is related to Ockham's razor, and to parsimony, but is distinct.

The principle is that an explanation for a pattern should preferably be applicable as broadly as the pattern is observed, but not more broadly. For example, an evolutionary explanation for group living that can be applied to all the group-living insects is preferable to an explanation that works only for one species of ant. The explanation should preferably not explain the pattern more broadly than it occurs. For example, an explanation for the fusion reaction of the sun merely in terms of the presence of hydrogen would also tend to predict fusion in many other contexts where it does not generally occur, making this explanation less desirable than a more complex one which also specifies the need for the physical conditions which encourage the hydrogen to fuse.

This is the sort of logical statement that is so obvious as to rarely need to be said, yet I need to say it for this talk. If you know what I should call it, please let me know.

Acronymic Challenge

As a grad student, I operated independently enough, and had a large enough group of undergraduate assistants, that I decided to pretend I had my own institute. I named it the Dissertational Institute for Evolutionary Demography, and believe me, I worked for that acronym.

Some colleagues and I are now discussing starting an actual scientific society for evolutionary demography, and it needs a good acronym. I suggested Society for Ecological and Evolutionary Demography (SEED) but was shot down on the grounds that I had added Ecology to the society just for the acronym. So I'm still thinking here, and wonder if you have any good ideas.

It has to have the words "Evolutionary Demography" in it and some word that means society or association. It can have the word "International" if the I helps. Keep in mind that this is going to be an actual scientific society, so nothing ridiculous, scatological or overtly jocular will do.

Now, I should clarify I'm not actually in charge here, so I don't necessarily get to pick the name, but if you propose something sufficiently clever, appropriate and memorable, I'll propose it, and you may have the honor of naming a scientific society.