4 ms·

To me, the choices of names for clades seem like madness: All apes (superfamily): Hominoidea; great apes (family): Hominidae; African great apes (subfamily): H

by mmooss 2mo ago

To me, the choices of names for clades seem like madness: All apes (superfamily): Hominoidea; great apes (family): Hominidae; African great apes (subfamily): Homininae; Pan‐Homo clade (tribe): Hominini; human clade (subtribe): Hominina. [0] The potential for error seems enormous, and also imagine speaking those words without creating confusion, or try forming singulars and possessives that, in text and speech, unambiguously identify the clade. Can anyone on the inside shed insight on why they do this to themselves, and to everyone else who has even less understanding? Is it self-hate? Imagine a large codebase that named variables like that - there would be a lynching late one night when the bug was found to be confusion. Despite my reaction, I guess there is some good reason that all these smart, experienced people make this choice. [0] From the paper the OP describes: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13485234/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13485234/

foxglacier 2mo ago
Homie, no idea. [Sorry I never joke but surely the biologists were joking when they came up with that so it should be fair game]
- ompogUe 2mo ago
  If we're joking: A Roman walks into a bar and says, "Can I have a martinus?" The bartender asks, "Don't you mean a martini?" The Roman responds, "If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it."
  - macintux 2mo ago
    I become (irrationally?) annoyed when I find "cannoli" listed on a menu, especially at an Italian restaurant where they should know better, and it's a single cannolo.
    - jjtheblunt 2mo ago
      maybe the idea is you get one of the many prepared
    - mdp2021 2mo ago
      In the list, 'cannoli' means they have cannoli; 'cannolo' means they serve a cannolo.
jltsiren 2mo ago
That's just the established naming convention. For brown bears, you have parvorder Ursida, superfamily Ursoidea, family Ursidae, subfamily Ursinae, tribe Ursini, genus Ursus, and finally species Ursus arctos. When there are millions of taxonomic names, you want to establish some kind of regular structure, because you are going to run out of useful distinctive names.
- thaumasiotes 2mo ago
  > and finally species Ursus arctos What happened there? The normal thing would be for the species name to be identical with the genus name, but as far as I can tell Ursus ursus doesn't refer to anything. Why break into Greek?
  - jcranmer 2mo ago
    Ask Linnaeus? Wikipedia has a picture of Linnaeus's 1735 taxonomy [1] giving what I think is Ursus ursus, Ursus coati, and Ursus wickhead, and the 10th edition in 1758 has Ursus arctos, Ursus luscus, Ursus meles, and Ursus lotor. I don't know when it changed between the 1st and 10th editions, or why, and trying to read Latin taxonomical texts with many abbreviations makes my head hurt. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Linnaeus_-_Regnum_Animale_%281735%29.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Linnaeus...
    - mmooss 2mo ago
      > I don't know when it changed between the 1st and 10th editions If we're talking about Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, quite a bit: Binomial nomenclature wasn't included until the 10th edition, for example. And from an prominent 2015 paper [0]: "In modern-day classifications, the starting point for botanical names is Linnaeus' Species Plantarum and for zoological names it is the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae." [0] Michael A. Ruggiero, Dennis P. Gordon, et al. A Higher Level Classification of All Living Organisms. PloS One. (April 2015) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0119248 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... (see also this correction: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0130114 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... )
applicative 2mo ago
I agree, but it is clear they got used to it. I suppose once you learn the endings, you can generate the higher genera from the name of a bottom level species familar to us like human-cat-dog / homo-felis-canis Superfamily -oidea Hominoidea | Feloidea | Canoidea | Family -idae Hominidae | Felidae | Canidae | Subfamily -inae Homininae | Felinae (Small cats) | Caninae | Tribe -ini Hominini | Felini | Canini | Subtribe -ina Hominina | Felina | Canina |
AlotOfReading 2mo ago
Honestly, you get used to it. I find hierarchial binomial/trinomial naming system used in biology a lot more clear than the TLAs so common in engineering. Half of the terms are pretty uncommon as well.

by mmooss 2mo ago

foxglacier 2mo ago

Homie, no idea. [Sorry I never joke but surely the biologists were joking when they came up with that so it should be fair game]

ompogUe 2mo ago
If we're joking: A Roman walks into a bar and says, "Can I have a martinus?" The bartender asks, "Don't you mean a martini?" The Roman responds, "If I wanted a double, I would have asked for it."
- macintux 2mo ago
  I become (irrationally?) annoyed when I find "cannoli" listed on a menu, especially at an Italian restaurant where they should know better, and it's a single cannolo.
  - jjtheblunt 2mo ago
    maybe the idea is you get one of the many prepared
  - mdp2021 2mo ago
    In the list, 'cannoli' means they have cannoli; 'cannolo' means they serve a cannolo.

jltsiren 2mo ago

That's just the established naming convention. For brown bears, you have parvorder Ursida, superfamily Ursoidea, family Ursidae, subfamily Ursinae, tribe Ursini, genus Ursus, and finally species Ursus arctos. When there are millions of taxonomic names, you want to establish some kind of regular structure, because you are going to run out of useful distinctive names.

thaumasiotes 2mo ago
> and finally species Ursus arctos What happened there? The normal thing would be for the species name to be identical with the genus name, but as far as I can tell Ursus ursus doesn't refer to anything. Why break into Greek?
- jcranmer 2mo ago
  Ask Linnaeus? Wikipedia has a picture of Linnaeus's 1735 taxonomy [1] giving what I think is Ursus ursus, Ursus coati, and Ursus wickhead, and the 10th edition in 1758 has Ursus arctos, Ursus luscus, Ursus meles, and Ursus lotor. I don't know when it changed between the 1st and 10th editions, or why, and trying to read Latin taxonomical texts with many abbreviations makes my head hurt. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Linnaeus_-_Regnum_Animale_%281735%29.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Linnaeus...
  - mmooss 2mo ago
    > I don't know when it changed between the 1st and 10th editions If we're talking about Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, quite a bit: Binomial nomenclature wasn't included until the 10th edition, for example. And from an prominent 2015 paper [0]: "In modern-day classifications, the starting point for botanical names is Linnaeus' Species Plantarum and for zoological names it is the tenth edition of the Systema Naturae." [0] Michael A. Ruggiero, Dennis P. Gordon, et al. A Higher Level Classification of All Living Organisms. PloS One. (April 2015) https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0119248 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... (see also this correction: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0130114 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... )

applicative 2mo ago

AlotOfReading 2mo ago

Honestly, you get used to it. I find hierarchial binomial/trinomial naming system used in biology a lot more clear than the TLAs so common in engineering. Half of the terms are pretty uncommon as well.