Taxacom: Mandatory ending correction after 226 years of wrong usage - the Dasytes case

Thu Jan 30 15:34:00 CST 2025

Hi Doug,
You write:

'Michael Heads wrote: "This is why no-one is suggesting changing Agriotes
or Lipotes to feminine". Actually, if they are being misgendered as
masculine, then I *am* suggesting changing them'.

They are not being misgendered (see my last note) - they are masculine.
Agriotes means the field one or field dweller (M), not fieldness (F),
Lipotes means 'the abandoned one' (M), not 'abandonedness' (F). There is no
reason to feminize these or the many other homologous cases, including
Dasytes (the rough or hairy one, not roughness or hairiness).

On Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 6:06 AM Douglas Yanega <dyanega at gmail.com> wrote:

> In a nutshell, "taxonomic tradition" is not infallible, and not immutable.
>
> Michael Heads wrote: "This is why no-one is suggesting changing Agriotes
> or Lipotes to feminine"
>
> Actually, if they are being misgendered as masculine, then I *am*
> suggesting changing them. That's what "mandatory ending correction" means.
> The Code does not set any time limits, it does not contain a
> "grandfathering clause" to accept traditional treatment regardless of
> whether it is incorrect.
>
> There are very few examples - and I've seen nearly every single one -
> where a misgendered suffix has been used so often and for so long that it
> might merit serious consideration for an application to the Commission
> specifically to address the gender issue and preserve the *misgendered*
> forms.
>
> As far as precedent, the Commission has almost never, in its history,
> issued rulings *specifically* intended to address the genders of names.
> Out of some 4000 rulings and opinions and declarations, I can only think of
> maybe 3 or 4 examples, and in none of the ones I know of was the
> misgendered variant the one adopted; the rulings were to PREVENT
> taxonomists from continuing to misgender names. The most recent such ruling
> was one in which every genus name ending in or based upon Lepisma was
> expressly declared to be neuter, despite centuries of various taxonomists
> treating many of the names as if they were feminine - including Linnaeus
> himself. "Lepsima saccharina" is gone, forever, replaced by Lepisma
> saccharinum.
>
> As far as exceptions go, one of the only cases I know of where I - in my
> capacity as a Commissioner - might vote in favor of allowing misgendering
> is the >150 mantis genera ending in "-mantis", which are all treated as
> feminine, with no discernable justification under the ICZN. There are a
> fair number of frog genera whose names end in "mantis" and they are all
> treated as masculine.
>
> In "standard Greek dictionaries", the word is given only as masculine:
>
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.perseus.tufts.edu%2Fhopper%2Fmorph%3Fl%3Dmantis%26la%3Dgreek&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7981940ec84f44a4945b08dd4175d6d4%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638738697307648619%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C80000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=ZnXdei5wxujaD47yoG4e7vZURTRUVJZ8LnxwRNaZ1f0%3D&reserved=0
>
>
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wiktionary.org%2Fwiki%2F%25CE%25BC%25CE%25AC%25CE%25BD%25CF%2584%25CE%25B9%25CF%2582%23Ancient_Greek&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7981940ec84f44a4945b08dd4175d6d4%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638738697307665461%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C80000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=2gHcEMqI9NQGg6xe%2Fntn8W1Jd5dI5po2Dm5Hjd%2F0Hzo%3D&reserved=0
>
> and Linnaeus treated Mantis as a subgenus of Gryllus, so none of the
> species were originally combined with the genus name "Mantis" - they were
> all given as masculine epithets, including Gryllus (Mantis) religiosus:
>
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.biodiversitylibrary.org%2Fitem%2F219023%23page%2F438%2Fmode%2F1up&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7981940ec84f44a4945b08dd4175d6d4%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638738697307675936%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C80000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=8U37WE%2BZN3vvZKYWuDG2vZ%2F%2Fg1kDWkjekcACFVxZhQQ%3D&reserved=0
>
> EVEN IF we discover that there are rare uses in Greek where the word
> "mantis" is treated as feminine, then we would apply Article 30.1.4.2,
> treating the name as of variable gender, but it would still be masculine
> because it was *not* originally combined with feminine species epithets,
> and under 30.1.4.2 variable names are masculine by default. "Mantis
> religiosa" is *incorrect* under the ICZN. But, I'm not inclined to push
> for changing it, in this case.
>
> Changing the gender of names like Agriotes and Dasytes is trivial in terms
> of impact upon the global community (fewer than 200 species with affected
> spellings, of taxon names largely used *only by specialist coleopterists*)
> compared to all the species of mantises (probably over 1000) whose names
> would change if the Code was enforced in this case.
>
> Certainly, if you're a coleopterist like Isidor, who is directly affected
> by a change, it's going to be painful, but let's be objective about this:
> there are probably fewer than 10 people in the world who actively work on
> dasytine melyrids (I can only think of 5), and at least 2 of them are
> perfectly happy adopting the change in gender. Radical proposals like
> abandoning gender agreement and reverting all names to their original
> spellings would result in changes to the spellings of something on the
> order of 300,000 to 400,000 names across zoology. Abandoning gender
> agreement would be the *most* disruptive thing we could possibly do.
>
> Peace,
>
> --
> Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
> Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314  voicemail:951-827-8704
> FaceBook: Doug Yanega (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
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>   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
>
>

-- 
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*Biogeography of Australasia:  A molecular analysis*. Cambridge University
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*Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University of California Press,
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*Panbiogeography: Tracking the history of life*. Oxford University Press,
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