[vsnet-chat 4287] Re: on clarification...

[Taichi Kato <tkato>]

Re: [vsnet-chat 4278] Re: on clarification...

> Fortunately for the biological nomenclature
> people they have formal rules to try and avoid problems, but it's still
> confusing, and can cause name changes of well known creatures... ...that's
> why "brontosaurs" are now properly known as "apatosaurs"... ...it is all a
> matter of publication priority.

   Well, the rule only applies to scientific names, but not to common names.
If any of your language doen't have a common name to some biological
species, one has rights to propose a common name, which may differ from
author to author.  The selection between these common names are a matter
of either preference, priority and everything else.  Scientific names,
as you know, are not always permanently fixed, mainly because of the
availability of new techinques to examine the relationship between species
and subspecies, and orders, etc.  The best renowned work in ornithology
is Sibley and Monroe's classification based on DNA hybridization.
This technique has proven that the Paradise Flycatchers (formally ordered
after the old world fltcatchers, including the "blue") are more akin to
crows.  If this result is widely accepted, the order name will be
inevitably changed, though many of authorities tend to be reluctant to
introduce the change.  [ah, what was the original thread ;-)]

Regards,
Taichi Kato

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