Dear colleagues,
when describing and naming a new species, many authors make a mistake, they postulate a malformed suffix.
E.g., the species Pseudempleurosoma guanabarense Carvalho & Luque, 2012 was originally named Pseudempleurosoma guanabarensis in its species description.
But because of the latin or greek grammar, the "-sis" is not correctly fitting to "-soma". Therefore, the scientific community declared the originally chosen name a malformed suffix, says the name is unaccepted, and changed the species name to the grammatically correct "-se" (without a publication by the way).
So the question is: When describing and naming a new species, what are the correct grammatical rules for either latin or greek names? Probably it is just the declination? But how can I know if a genus name is either a, o, u or another declination type? Are common rules applicable? Do I need a latin and a greek dictionary to check the declination and the sex/gender masculinum, femininum, neutrum?
I used to learn latin in school, however, it's still difficult for me.
Thank you, Yours,
Stefan
Dear friend: indeed, you need to know what grammatical gender the final part of the compound belongs to in Latin, when establishing the agreement of the adjective. So, for example, if the species to be cataloged is a tree, you should know that trees are normally feminine in Latin, so the ending of the adjective must be feminine. In the case of "Pseudempleurosoma" the word is of neuter gender (because its ending word is a greek neuter one), so the adjective should be "guanabarense", which is neuter, and not "gunabarensis", which is either masculine or feminine. And yes, the dictionary clarifies these things, but it is much better to go to a Latinist at your university: he will know very well how to correctly describe that species in Latin.
Dear friend,
thank you very much. Your explanation helps a lot.
Best wishes
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