I am aware that American Fisheries Society moved to capitalization of all common names (i.e. Lake Trout), but ICZN (International Code of Zoological Nomenclature) does not. Are there generally accepted rules for plants, birds, and animals? Example of what we are editing: "...The Round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) and water chestnut (Trapa natans) are two ...." or "....be within 2 km of bank swallow nest colonies." Finally, "others were mostly targeting smallmouth bass, followed by walleye, carp, northern pike, channel catfish, and freshwater drum, respectively." I am aware this is a can of worms.
Hi.
For birds and other vertebrates (including aquatic species), there are many regional and national checklists in which you can find widely used common names, e.g. in birds, like in this bibliographical source on the avifauna of the Western Palearctic :
MITCHELL, D. (2017). Birds of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. An Annotated Checklist. Lynx Edicions. Bellaterra (Barcelona). 335 pp.
Indeed, lists of common names for invertebrates are sometimes impossible to obtain, except in some taxonomic groups, like butterflies and dragonflies.
Best regards from the Canary Islands.
Hi John,
Spellings of Latin nomina in ICZN (1999, 4th Edition), as opposite to common names, are regulated internationally and must be considered as the Law for all zoologists. Spellings of common names are regulated only by some institutions in few countries. So, they are NOT a law for all the World.
I agree with you that this situation has become 'a can of worms' due to that strange decision of AFS officials to Capitalize all common names of fishes.
AFS argued that 'capitalization helps to eliminate the ambiguity that accompanies names like blue catfish, lake trout, black brotula, and deepsea sole' (Page L et al. 2013. New Seventh Edition of Common and Scientific names of Fishes. Changes include capitalization of common names // Fisheries. Vol. 38. No 4, P. 189).
It looks like AFS officials consider authors & readers are halfwits, who cannot even understand from the text whether the word is the part of the common name or not. It also looks like one of attempts to eradicate homonyms in the language, which is ridiculous.
On the other hand, each common name is actually one more diagnostic character to distinguish between close similar species. At the same time, by using Capitalizations everywhere, we loss valuable information about a named species, which really required Capitalization - for example, was it named in honor of some geographical place, local proper name, great event or noble man.
Thus, my recommendation is - to publish with whose publishers & journals, who don't consider authors & readers are complete jerks :0)
Sincerely yours,
Boris
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