9
that was created by people as a means of
communicating information to other people.
Let's look at an example; Ole and Lena are
out fishing. Ole catches a fish. Lena hollers
over, "Whatcha' catch Ole?" Ole hollers
back, "Bluegill!" Lena calls back, "OK!"
Lena knows exactly what Ole caught. To
them, the difference between a bluegill and
some other fish is important so they have
given it a "common" name. What if Ole had
caught a crayfish? Ole might holler back,
"Crawdad!" and Lena might respond, "Oh,
OK". It doesn't matter to them what species
of crayfish Ole caught. To them, a crawdad
is a crawdad and all crawdads are the same.
Each species account starts with a section on
"Systematics". This begins with the
currently accepted scientific name followed
by a long list of other names called
synonyms. The scientific name is composed
of two parts, the genus and the species. The
first person to discover and describe a new
species gets to give it its species name. But,
the scientific name is not fixed, never to be
changed. Rather, it is constantly being
reviewed and compared to closely related
species. If it is determined that the genus is
incorrect, it is changed. Also, when papers
are published where a species is mentioned,
its scientific name is included. Sometimes,
this name is misspelled and sometimes the
crayfish was misidentified. So, we have a
list of synonyms which tries to list all the
names that have been used for this crayfish.
Most of the names on these lists came from
Hobbs
104
, Hobbs and Jass
110
and Hobbs
107
.
The currently accepted names can be found
in "Common and scientific names of aquatic
invertebrates from the United States and
Canada: Crustaceans".
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