Left: Linnaeus’ house in Uppsala.
Below: his country house at
Hammarby; his private collections
were housed in a stone building
nearby.
Images by Andreas Trepte,
www.photo-natur.net.
Systema Naturae, published in 1758, is held to be genesis
of modern zoological nomenclature. Today, the
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN)
administers animal names, while the International Code of
Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants (ICN) governs
plants; the ICNB and the ICTV look after bacteria and
viruses respectively. There are some small, largely
inconsequential differences in the rules and terminology
applied by these organisations; for example the ICZN uses
the term ‘specific name’, whereas the ICN prefers
‘specific epithet’. Interestingly, the ICN does not allow
the genus name to be the same as the species name,
whereas the ICZN finds Iguana iguana to be completely
acceptable. Species names may be repeated in countless
different genera, however genus names must be unique
within a kingdom. That does not mean that they cannot be
duplicated, however: Huia is both a genus of frogs from
Indonesia and a genus of extinct vascular plants described
from fossils found in China. To add to the confusion, Huia
is also the common name of an extinct wattlebird from
New Zealand, with the scientific name of Heteralocha
acutirostris!
Convention dictates that binomial or scientific names are
usually italicised when printed in normal text. However,
the names should be different from
the default font, so if the rest of the
text is in italics, the scientific
names revert to normal style.
When hand written they should be
underlined. The genus may be
abbreviated when used on more
than one occasion; for example,
Tiliqua scincoides and T. rugosa.
A single unknown species can be
denoted by ‘sp.’ (e.g. Pogona sp.)
and a number of species from the
same genus can be signified by
‘spp.’ (e.g. Egernia spp.). These
abbreviations are not written in
italics. Sometimes a name and date
accompanies a binomial name -
like Tiliqua scincoides (White,
1790) - and this additional
information is informative of the
scientist who described the species,
and the date of publication.
Any description of a new species must rely upon a
specimen that is preserved indefinitely and can be made
available for re-examination and comparison as required.
Huge collections of type specimens perpetually linked to
the original descriptions of the species are housed in
museums and other institutions around the world. A
‘holotype’ is a single specimen which is the designated
blueprint for the species description; when several
specimens are used, these are referred to as ‘syntypes’.
Binomial names are typically based upon Latin, and still
rely upon Latin grammar, but Greek is also used, along
with other languages, and it is very common for species to
be named after places and people. When this occurs, the
suffixes ‘–ii’ and ‘–ae’ are used to denote male and
female, respectively. So Hypsilurus boydii was named
after a man named Boyd, and Cacophis harriettae is
presumably named after a lady called Harriet?! And you
don’t have to be a scientist to have something named after
you. In 2012, a genus of ferns from Central and South
America was named after pop star Lady Gaga (Gaga
spp.). A horse fly has been named after Beyonce; a beetle
after Frank Zappa; a frog after Sting; and (without a hint