Re: Rhaphidophora sp. at Fairchild Tropical Garden

From: Krzysztof Kozminski kk at kozminski.com> on 2000.06.27 at 01:42:50(4933) On Fri, 23 Jun 2000, Julius Boos wrote: > Back in the 'good old days' of the predecessor of this list on snail mail, I > posted a letter to members pointing out that unlike SOME of the scientists > who name plants in this group of organisms, there were others who did so, > seemingly with a sense of humor, in other groups. Examples given then were > the Trinidadian cave-living lizard Proctoporus shreevii (Shreeves 'anus'), > and a genus of cave-living millipedes, given the name > 'Caramba' (Spanish for 'upon my word, or better yet, DAMN!--I am NOT making > this up!!) by the researcher Shear. > The first species he names-- Caramba delburro ('the donkeys damn'), then > came Caramba delnegro (easy on this one!) , then Caramba grandeza (the HUGE > damn!) and finally Caramba enbecausius (because I say DAMN!) > Take heart Pete, with a LITTLE imagination (I can assist with this aspect!) > and some thought to the phallic 'background' to OUR group of plants, the > list of available species epithets is truly mind boggling! I plugged "lalapa lusa" into google search and it came with a really fun page with taxonomical jokestry: http://www.best.com/~atta/taxonomy.html. Some of the ones that caught my atttention: Eucritta melanolimnetes Clark, 1998 (fossil amphibian) Loosely translates as "Creature from the black lagoon". Panama canalia Marsh, 1993 (braconid) Draculoides bramstokeri Harvey & Humphreys, 1995 (spider) (too bad that orchid taxonomists did not think about this one - KK) Trombicula doremi Brennan & Beck, 1955 (chigger) Trombicula fasola Brennan & Beck, 1955 (chigger) Agra vation Erwin, 1983 (carabid) A bunch of bug species named by the same entomologist, Kirkaldy): Ochisme, Dolichisme, Florichisme, Marichisme, Nanichisme, Peggichisme, Polychisme (read them out loud = I did not get it until Peggichisme) Kirkaldy was criticized for frivolity by the London Zoological Society in 1912. Pison eu Menke, 1988 (sphecid) Another good page is: http://insects.ucr.edu/staff/yanega.html (click on "Curious Scientific Names") +More KK ==================== "Microsoft is to software what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking" Krzysztof Kozminski kk@netgate.net http://u1.netgate.net/~kk/

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