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

[Thomas Pape]

Good points, Doug.

>>> With access to just two lists, anyone can answer the question

But why two lists, if one is enough?
Why not build Catalogue of Life into that single authoritative source of scientific names?

/Thomas

-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> On Behalf Of Douglas Yanega via Taxacom
Sent: 30. januar 2025 23:53
To: taxacom at lists.ku.edu
Subject: Re: Taxacom: Mandatory ending correction after 226 years of wrong usage - the Dasytes case

On 1/30/25 1:00 PM, Thomas Pape via Taxacom wrote:
> The issue of gender agreement can be seen from various angles.
> Try to ask students whether they prefer to look up a species epithet in Catalogue of Life, or to consult a Latin dictionary.

This is an unfair question - a "straw man". And, by posing it, you actually help me prove my point.

Looking names up in the Catalogue of Life is useless, since it tells you nothing about whether they are nouns or adjectives, and could easily have them misspelled, since the quality control on CoL is nowhere near 100%.

A dictionary is much better, but students shouldn't need to use one. 
Only ONE person - the first one to check a name - should need to use a dictionary, *and once they have the answer, no one else should have to repeat that effort*. That's one of the problems with the Code treating gender agreement as a problem hat each individual taxonomist has to research independently. It shouldn't be a solo effort, it should be a group effort, with a centralized, authoritative list.

Basically, you're offering your students two inferior choices, when there are better options possible.

> I picked at random a taxonomic paper containing a good number of scientific names of spiders:
>
> Brigittea avicenna
> Mesiotelus patricki
> Micaria atropatene
> Palpimanus carmania
> Palpimanus persicus
> Rhysodromus genoensis
> Rhysodromus medes
> Sestakovaia annulipes
> Sestakovaia hyrcania
> Zagrotes bifurcatus
> Zagrotes borna
> Zagrotes parla
>
> Try to ask a student, which of these names would have to adhere to gender agreement, and what their ending would be if all these species were transferred to the genus Funny Lin & Li, 2022 (family: Dictynidae).

A student confronted with these names would not need to look them up in a dictionary, *if there is an official list of adjectival names available instead* (which is explicitly what I am proposing), since such a list would not require an exact match (e.g., any name ending in "-ensis" would be recognized as a 2-termination adjective - a dictionary would not recognize a name like "genoensis", and would be useless). For that matter, many standard Latin dictionaries would not recognize "bifurcatus", either.

Since there is already an official list giving the genders of all spider genera online, it takes a moment to see that the genus Funny is neuter. 
Since I have a database of all the declinable adjectives (plus their spelling variants), I can easily tell that only persicus, genoensis, and bifurcatus are declinable adjectives (persicus is /potentially/ a noun, linguistically, but *taxonomists* don't use it that way, just as they never use "alba" as a noun). All the species names in the list above would be identical except those three, which would become persicum, genoense, and bifurcatum.

With access to just two lists, anyone can answer the question you pose quickly and easily, without needing to use either a dictionary, or read the original literature (which can be MUCH harder to track down than a dictionary). You don't need to know what "avicenna", "carmania", "hyrcania", "borna", or "parla" mean - you just need to know that they are not declinable adjectives.

The right tools can make any task easier, *including* gender agreement. 
Giving hypothetical students the choice of two (and only two) *inferior* tools is - as I said - an unfair question. We have the option of giving everyone *much better* tools, designed specifically for this one task.

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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