[Taxacom] most common species names

[Gary Rosenberg]

For Western Atlantic marine Mollusca (n= 15876) <www.malacolog.org> , the top five names are
floridana, um, us (94)
alba, um, us (79)
minor, minus (68)
elongata, um, us (62)
antartica, um, us (56)
striata, um, us (50)
major, majus (47)
antillarum (39)
patagonica (39)

For taxa originally named at species rank (n = 4851; not all of the 15876 above have been coded for what the original rank was) the top five are
floridana, um, us (60, 37)
antarctica, um, us (40, 27)
patagonica, um, us (29, 21)
antillarum (28, 11)
atlantica, um, us (27, 22)
The second number shows how many are currently considered valid species.

The top five non-geographically biased names introduced at species rank are:
striata, um, us (27, 11)
alba, um, us (26, 10)
elegans  (24, 14)
sulcata, um, us (21, 6)
cancellata, um, us (20, 10)

"Minor" was used with initial rank of species only 6 times, and "major" only once, compared to 62 and 46 at infraspecific ranks .

An interesting pattern is that the nominal species with geographic names are more likely to currently be considered valid species than those with names descriptive of characteristics of the organism, 64% (118/184) vs 40 % (51/128). 

Gary Rosenberg
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia