Talk:Binomial nomenclature

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Missing material?[edit]

One thing that seems to be missing from the article is what happens when a species is moved to another genus in which its specific name/epithet already exists. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:00, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Excellent reflection of underlying evolutionary patterns"[edit]

I've removed this recent addition to the lead, as it seems too narrow (and recent) a result for the lead: the paper addresses the concern that monotypic genera are an "artifact of human classification", saying that simulated phylogenies produce a similar distribution.

Binomial systematics is shown to be an excellent reflection of underlying evolutionary patterns.[1]

References

  1. ^ Sigward, J. D.; Sutton, M. D.; Bennett, K. D. (2018). "How big is a genus? Towards a nomothetic systematics". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 183 (2): 237252. doi:10.1093/zoolinnean/zlx059.

I'm not sure if there's a good place for the reference in this article. Opinions? Nitpicking polish (talk) 15:40, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Our article is about binomial nomenclature, not about the distribution of the number of species in genera, which is a matter of how taxonomists use binomial nomenclature, not the nomenclature itself. So I don't see that the journal article is relevant. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:39, 21 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

T. rex most well known[edit]

"Tyrannosaurus rex is probably the most widely known binomial.[1]" doesn't seem to be an important enough sentence to include in the first paragraph, and with only a single citation from a generation ago it may no longer even be correct. 199.212.55.162 (talk) 00:37, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Well, a Google search for the exact phrase "T rex" (Google ignores punctuation) gave me about 66 million hits as opposed to about 32 million for "E coli" which seems to me another well known abbreviated binomial. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:07, 3 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What about Homo sapiens? It results in 72 million hits in a Google search, compared to only 9 million for the fully written Tyrannosaurus rex. Should we change the text here? DKMell (talk) 06:40, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Definetly should CheeseyHead (talk) 20:48, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Question[edit]

Do the various naming codes adress how these names should be integrated into various languages? For example, I'm curious as to how the capitalization rules work in German. More interestingly, how should these names be written in languages which use non Latin scripts?

Is there an official international standard for "localization" to various languages? Or is officially it left up to local language authorities? Or do the codes not adress this issue officially at all?

If there is such a standard, it would be nice to mention it in the article. If not, it might be useful to add examples of how various languages adress this issue. JonathanHopeThisIsUnique (talk) 19:02, 25 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Scientific names are treated as literal strings of characters. They are always written in exactly the way prescribed in the nomenclature codes. So if you look in Chinese or Russian botanical sources, for example, you will see the scientific names in the Latin script, although there may also be a transcription and of course a vernacular name. See, as just one example, this extract. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:17, 26 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Image bug[edit]

That is not an image in the beginning, it's just text. Please change it to a proper image. 111.88.15.184 (talk) 14:11, 11 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It was caused by a bad edit. Now fixed. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:45, 11 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hemihomonyms[edit]

The text in the "Problems" section says "At least 1241 instances of such binomial duplication occur", but the paper by Shipunov cited in support of this apparently shows only genus-level name duplication, not duplication of both genus and species names. Other sources, although less authoritative, have only a handful (< 10) of known cases. I think there's a mistake here, but maybe I'm missing something. DKMell (talk) 06:59, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@DKMell: you are quite right; well spotted! I've changed the text to
"Because genus names are unique only within a nomenclature code, it is possible for two or more species to share the same genus name and even the same binomial if they occur in different kingdoms. At least 1240 instances of genus name duplication occur."
I think this is more accurate (and avoids some false precision). Peter coxhead (talk) 09:04, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Too much explanation[edit]

In the end of the opening there's a part that reads ""binomi'N'al" with an "N" before the "al", which is not a typographic error, meaning "two-name naming system"." I feel it's explaining it too much. It's clunky and hard to read. Can we get rid of it altogether? CheeseyHead (talk) 21:03, 16 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Clunky it is (I wrote that version), but for a reason. There is long history of the word "binominal" repeatingly getting removed from the lede. Allow me a few more days to research and elaborate. --Wotheina (talk) 08:56, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]