As it happens, I have an old book of root words I inherited from my late grandfather, Richard Swift. Something about having that book in my hands begged for this exploration in a way that having the breadth of the Internet at my fingertips never did.
Common raven. Common raven: Corvus corax Common ravens are the biggest of the corvids and in fact, the biggest of all the songbirds so it makes sense their name might be the yardstick by which other corvids are measured. American crow: Corvus brachyrhynchos Turning to American crows, we can see that yardstick I mentioned coming into play.
The bird looks essentially like an American crow but with a more pronounced bill. Thick-billed raven: Corvus crassirostris Sometimes, scientific names are precisely their common names. Such is the case here. In titles, it is appropriate to write the entire scientific name of animals in uppercase letters.
In the plant kingdom , classification after species is subspecies subsp. For example, there are three subspecies of Grevillea victoriae. Similar to animal names, it is common to see a specific epithet that refers to a geographic area or the person who discovered it.
For example, Grevillea victoriae F. Although these are proper nouns, they are still written in lowercase font. Be mindful that some word processors might attempt to capitalize these references. This is something to check when proofreading your text. When writing, the cultivar name is added after genus or specific epithet and is put in single quotes without italicization.
For example,. One of the basic rules of scientific writing is consistency. Regardless of your choice of scientific or common name, you must maintain consistency. Always check the author guidelines when preparing manuscripts. Formats for citations and references, headings, and section placement can be different.
Be assured that the format for writing scientific names is internationally consistent regardless of the intended journal. The rules presented above will help. In the next article in this series, we will discuss tips on how to write scientific names of bacterial species in a journal manuscript.
Similarly, Bufo californicus the Arroyo toad comes from California. The specific epithet of Tomocichla asfrasci , a beautiful fish from Panama, is actually an acronym for the Association of French Cichlid Aquarists, the group that sponsored the research that discovered the fish. Such names are discouraged but nonetheless they do exist. Sometimes names are not terribly appropriate. This may occur when the person describing an animal i. The describer may be working solely from preserved specimens.
For example, in the name of the fish Archocentrus septemfasciatus , the specific epithet means seven striped. Unfortunately, the animal involved only shows its seven stripes very, very rarely, namely when it is highly stressed, as it might well be when dropped into formalin!
The rest of the time, this fish typically shows no stripes at all, and when it is breeding it shows three spots. Perhaps a better name would have been Archocentrus trimaculatus , however, once an animal is named, provided the rules have been followed, the name sticks and cannot be changed just because the name is not appropriate. One of my favorites is Labidochromis coeruleus. The specific epithet means blue, but the fish is a bright, golden yellow.
Similarly, Hypomesus transpacificus the Delta smelt suggests a fish found across the Pacific, i. Unfortunately, the name was given before it was recognized that the smelt found in Asia is completely different from and only distantly related to the Delta smelt which, in contrast to its grandiose name, is found only in the upper estuary of San Francisco Bay, a very restricted habitat indeed. The bottom line is that scientific names are often useful, but they can also be misleading.
Making scientific names The simplest way to make a name out of a root is to add the suffix "a", "us" or "um" to the end of the root depending on the gender , e. Often, however, one root is not enough to clearly identify the organism and you want to elaborate. So, you might combine two roots, e. This combines the root oct- with the root maculat- and the suffix us.
To put the roots together we add an "o" in between other times we might use an "a" or an "I" depending on the root. The "o" or "I" is called the combining vowel. Note that there are other possible suffices besides "a", "us" and "um"; these are the ones you will see most often in scientific names.
When you are combining these parts together, we try not to mix languages within a word. For example, we say hepatic meaning "pertaining to the liver", not hepatal.
While the suffix -al also means "pertaining to", it is Latin. It gets harder if there are both Greek and Latin roots for the same structure, e. So we would say renal but never renic and we would say nephric but never nephral. They have since been split into multiple genera in order to better represent important evolutionary differences among them. Bobcats were once known by the scientific name, Felis rufus , this name has since been changed to Lynx rufus. Unfortunately, older scientific literature on bobcats will still be found under Felis rufus and some sources may not recognize the name change right away.
Some species have come to be known by multiple scientific names. In such cases one name is chosen for the species and the other names are referred to as "synonyms" of the species name. For example, all bats in the genus Lasiurus were once also known by the generic name Nycteris. So Lasiurus borealis would have also been known as Nycteris borealis. The valid, currently recognized name is Lasiurus borealis and Nycteris borealis is considered a synonym.
If you cannot find information for a particular scientific name try searching the taxonomy databases we use, to be sure that the species isn't known by a different name. To cite this page: Myers, P. Espinosa, C. Parr, T. Jones, G.
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