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| The Name of Living Beings |
August 17th, 2003.
By Professor Fabio Cupul
Permanent Member of SOMEDICYT, the prestigious Mexican
Society for the Dissemination of Science and Techniques. |
We humans like to assign names to
all the things that surround us. The explanation for
this attitude is quite simple: we feel better when we
organize our environment by differentiating the objects
that compose it. In that way we try to simplify the
complexity of the environment in order to be able to
give satisfying explanations for phenomena that occur
within it and thus appease our spirit.
Nonetheless the names we assign to
the things that surround us, especially the other living
beings with which we share this planet, may only be
valid within the community in which we live while they
have no meaning should we move to a nearby community
or even if we should enter into another culture.
Needless to say that the foregoing
situation would turn into a real problem in today’s
globalized society, with representatives from various
societies meeting with the purpose of drawing up plans
for either the protection or the conservation of a living
being in danger of extinction.
On one side, Germans would seek the
protection of their “Knurrval”, the Dutch
would fight for the conservation of their “Bultrug”
while the Russians and the Japanese would seek a way
to continue the commercial benefits they derive from
their “Gorbach” and “Zato Kujira”.
At first sight, it would appear that each culture was
tenaciously arguing for the conservation or exploitation
of a different living entity and thus it would seem
senseless to meet in order to develop strategies for
any sort of joint ventures.
Incredibly, such a meeting changes
tack when a scientist stands up and informs everyone
that the names used by each one of them in their own
culture to refer to the living being in question are
all in fact referring to the same animal that they want
to either protect or exploit commercially: Megaptera
novaeangliae, the Humpback whale.
As one may realize, besides the variety
of names which, in this case, an animal may be given
in function of the culture in which it is described
or the geographical zone where it is found, scientists
have chosen to use a common language to identify the
type of animal or plant that is being discussed, thus
avoiding confusion. This has been called the scientific
nomenclature. Scientific nomenclature is also of great
value because it helps clarify situations where two
very different beings bear the same name, for example
the word “avispa” in Spanish is used to
designate an infinite number of winged land insects
as well as a series of invertebrate, venomous marine
animals.
Scientific nomenclature, i.e.: the
words science uses to name plants and animals, is an
ingenious way created by scientists to untangle the
problem of names of plants and animals in different
countries, languages and cultures. It was Swedish naturalist
Carl von Linnaeus (1707-1778) who designed a system
back in the 18th century to name all the species known
at that time, using two words. This system known as
binominal nomenclature is still used to this day.
Using the binominal system, every
species receives a name proper to itself made up of
two Latin words. For example, Homo sapiens is the scientific
name of the human species. The word sapiens meaning
“the one who knows”, refers specifically
to the human species, while the word Homo, meaning “man”
describes the group of organisms related to man of today.
The larger group of species is called a genus and includes
other species such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus,
both extinct today.
All living beings known to date,
as well as those that have been extinct for decades
or millions of years, have a scientific Latin name,
just like human beings. Latin is used because it was
the most widely used language among scientists and other
academics when Linnaeus first began to name the species.
This custom of using Latin, and Greek, has continued
because the spelling and pronunciation of the species’
name does not vary regardless of the language or culture
in which the organism is being described or referred
to.
To facilitate the recognition of
species, many scientific names are constructed using
Latin or Greek words that help describe some important
characteristic of the organism in question. For example,
the scientific name of the humpback whale is Megaptera
novaeangliae. Megaptera is a Greek word, mega meaning
big, and pteron wing or fin: “big fin”.
For its part, novaeangliae is a compound Latin word,
novous means new and angliae refers to England: “new
England”.
In the case of the humpback whale,
that means that the scientific name would translate
as “Big-Winged New Englander”. The scientific
name assigned to this marine mammal by German naturalist
Borowski in 1781 refers to its big pectoral fins and
stresses the fact that the first sightings of specimens
that enabled their classification occurred off the coast
of New England in the U.S.
Scientific names not only facilitate
communication, they also tell us if two species are
related and where they fit in the taxonomic hierarchy
(i.e.: within an organized system such as the one used
to classify books in a library or military ranks.)
The first level is the species, in
fact every living being belongs to a species and carries
its own name. The next is the genus. There can be various
species within the same genus, like in the case of the
Pelecanus genus that includes the American White Pelican,
Pelecanus erythrorhynchos, and the Brown Pelican, Pelecanus
occidentalis. The name of the genus as well as the species
of each organism is always either underlined or in italics,
and the first letter of the genus must be always be
a capital.
Genus that are related among themselves
belong to one same family. For example, although the
Canada Goose, Branta canadensis and the Northern Pintail,
Anas acuta, belong to different genus, they belong to
the same family: Anatidae. Also, various families that
share certain characteristics are grouped in orders.
Thus we find that the family of storks (Ciconiidae)
is grouped with that of vultures of the New World (Cathartidae),
within the Ciconiiform order.
The next level in the hierarchy is
the class. We find that storks, vultures, herons, egrets
and ibis (all of which belong to the Ciconiiform order)
and all the rest of the birds belong to the Bird class.
This latter class, along with that of the mammals (Mammalia),
the reptiles (Reptilia) and the amphibians (Amphibia),
are all grouped within the next level up called the
Chordata phylum. Finally, at the most general level
of all, all living organisms belong to one single kingdom.
All the animals that have ever existed to date belong
to the Animalia kingdom.
Actually, living beings are grouped
into five kingdoms: the animal (Animalia), the plant
(Plantae), the fungus or mushroom (Fungi), the bacteria
and some types of single-cell beings (Monera) and the
protozoan (Protista) ones. Despite all the efforts hundreds
of scientists make to classify nature, they are constantly
modifying the taxonomy to improve it. Also, new species
are named every day as science discovers them. In fact
it is believed that the task of naming the beings that
surround us will continue for many decades to come considering
that approximately 90 percent of the diversity of life
on earth (mainly insects) have yet to be discovered
by scientists.
Vallarta’s Nature Field Guide -
File 3
 The
Golden Silk Spider (Nephila clavipes) is an arachnid
that lives in the tropical regions of America and presents
a marked sexual dimorphism where the female (shown in
the photograph) is nearly six times larger than the
male, reaching about one inch in total body length.
The cephalothorax is grayish with three black spots
on either side. The abdomen is elongated, olive green
in color, with many pairs of white and yellow circles
along its length. In addition, it has locks of sensitive
hairs on its long legs. Like other species of its class,
the golden silk spider produces a golden thread, as
thin as a human hair, with which it weaves a web a meter
or more in diameter from which it hangs upside down
as it waits for its favorite food - flying insects.
The resistance, strength and elasticity of the spider
web has awakened the interest of researchers who seek
to uncover the mystery of such properties. This could
be of great value in improving all-purpose footwear
and clothing, ropes, nets, security belts and resistant
parachutes, as well as antioxidant and shockproof automobile
panels, among others. Although the aforementioned applications
are important to the civilian community, the feverish
interest in spider webs arose from the war industry
which, amazed by its impenetrability, considered it
as the ideal material in the production of bulletproof
vests, lighter and more resistant than those used until
now.
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