What would be the correct way of stating that the particular taxon belongs to a species complex, during identification? For example, a gecko that belongs to the Hemidactylus brookii complex. Thank you for the help.
Hello Omkar; There are various groups of ants that show the same pattern. They are referred to in just the same way that you have referred to the H. brookii complex. I'm not aware of a formal way of describing the complex. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
hi
botanists have complex groups too.
About dandelion, for example, I saw several ways to tackle with this problem:
1) Taraxacum officinale sensu lato (or sensu latissimo) ; which means you refer to this group in a broad meaning;
2) Taraxacum gr. erythrospermum; which means you refer to one of the microtaxa included in a subgeneris group formely or informely known as...
3) Taraxacum officinale sensu Linnaeus, ; which means you refer to the species as conceived by Linnaeus, thus in a broad sense (and not to the species to which the Linnaeus type actually belongs in modern taxonomy.
Could it help ?
marc
The naming system is standardized by two international codes that are accepted by all biologists worldwide. Those are the biological nomenclatures for plants covered by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. The biological nomenclature of animals is covered by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Linnaeus' hierarchical system of classification includes seven levels. They are, from largest to smallest, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. When referring to species, the first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs, while the second part of the specific name or specific epithet identifies the species within the genus. The names are italicized if typed or underlined if they are written. The first letter of genus is always capitalized, and the species is always lowercase.
if the genus gets too large and the species difficult to differentiate I call the genus a 'supergenus' eg, the genus Thyone amongst dendrchiortid holothuroids (please note the apostrophe before and after) but this has no nomenclatural status. If, on the other hand, there are too many different types within a species, which are difficult to separate, I call them cryptic/sibling species, or simply eg. the Thyone fusus complex, using the type species of the genus. Hope this helps.
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