taxonomy!

[jinian]

Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature (from Making Light) has some boring sections, but much of it is fall-down funny, at least if you're a bit of a taxonomy geek.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Some of it is fall-down funny, the stuff about duplications between animals and plants, which leaves out genus Xenia [ a fungus/animal duplication ] is Really Sodding Annoying when you have to database the things.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Yes, I don't think that should be allowed. What do you do to make it work, or have you just thrown up your hands so far?

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Basically, our database here contains two entities marked "Xenia(fungus)" and "Xenia(animal)", and anyone just searching on Xenia gets both.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Heh. I saw that site once, but it has more stuff now.

It isn't exactly fall-down funny, more queasy-making, but this discussion of how to get rid of the fungal-anamorph exception to "one species, one name" (http://www.belspo.be/bccm/publications/nomenclature_fungi/3-HENN100.WD.htm) is interesting.

[hattifattener]

oooo ... that does not look like a fun problem to try to deal with.