|
2. Names of the butterflies
People named plants and animals either because they are useful or dangerous or they are just interesting or beautiful. In this way a single species got a vernacular name in every language or even a different one in a local dialect. A species could be named in many ways. Already in the 18th century the need for an international method of naming became urgent but to this very day the nomenclature system is subject to alteration’s.
The Swedish professor, Carl von Linné (1707-1778), better known as Linnaeus, had developed already, two and half centuries ago, a system to name plants and animals in a scientific way. The 10th edition of his Systema Natura from 1758 formed the basis for modern nomenclature.
The system of Linnaeus is binary; a name is composed of a genus name followed by its epitheton. The former is written with a capital initial letter, the latter always entirely in lower case, even when the epitheton is the name of a person. The epitheta are declined according to the Latin language rules. It is determined by the gender of the genus name: masculine, feminine or neuter. In the case that the genus name is changed, the epitheton will follow, a very annoying matter for someone who requires to use species names.
Linnaeus had also developed a hierarchy in nomenclature: related genera are united into families and families into orders. The ending of a name indicates the position in the hierarchical system. Names of a family end on ‘idae’, those of a subfamily on ‘inae’ and those of a tribe on ‘ini’. A third name may be added to the binary name indicating a subspecies.
These artificial names, which consist of a mixture of Latin, Greek and newly invented words, are not useful for people who are not familiar with this practice. Such people prefer to use names in the own language. These names are sometimes very characteristic but they can also be very silly. Naming species by appealing vernacular names is a challenge, but in practice it is not easy.
Traditional English names often had a historical basis, which is meaningless outside England, for example the Camberwell beauty (Nymphalis antiopa); nobody outside England knows that Camberwell is a former suburb of London. The collection of this butterfly was a great sensation in 1748 among the Aurelian’s and was named after the locality where it was captured. The vernacular name in other countries is ‘mourning cloak’, named after the dark appearance of the butterfly.
Changes in scientific names
Scientific names may change by advancing insight in the historical background as a result of new biological facts. However, a change to names leads to confusion. To make it clear what name is connected to what species, the name of the author who described it the first time can be added. The name of the describer is placed between brackets in case that alterations were made to the name afterwards. Also the year of description can be added to avoid confusion. This causes more fuss, but in the case of butterflies it may be interesting. It shows that the majority of the species was already described in the 18th century, the period that nomenclature was developed after the rules of Linnaeus. At that time communication and travelling was not easy and so it is to understand that many mistakes were made. To this very day there are changes in scientific names as a fact of improvements.
An example of this is the purple hairstreak that was named by Linnaeus in 1758 as Papilio quercus and later by other entomologists placed in a succession of genera: Thecla, Zephyrus, Quercusia and Neozephyrus. Finally the present name Favonius quercus is now widely accepted.
|
|
The genus of the Purple hairstreak (Favonius quercus) was for a long-time a subject of discussion.
Photograph: Frits Bink ©. |
These changes in nomenclature were brought about by advances in analytical methods. In old times, it was only possible to describe a species by morphological features visible to the naked eye. Later on the microscope opened the way for finer details such as genital structures and chromosomes to be examined. The next step was the development of chemical analysis of the body tissue and currently it is the analysis of DNA, which is adding to our knowledge of a species. At this level of analysis it is possible to distinguish species at molecular level. The results are recorded as barcodes which can be elaborated in a computer.
However, the basis of systematics is a practical purpose. One should be reticent to accept new changes to genera names as long as the existing system works well. At present the blues living in close association with ants and contained within the genus Maculinea, is the subject of a proposed change to Phengaris, of which type species is Lycaena atroguttata (Oberthür, 1876) from the Naga Hills, India, at an altitude of 1800-2400m. I have not adopted this nomenclatural change because the results of the DNA research and application of the systematic rules are still unsatisfactory (Bink, 2010a). A decision by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature is awaited.
Vernacular names
Within the area of the Benelux three languages are spoken: Dutch, German and French. The cited vernacular names in the monographs are derived from the atlases in Dutch by Bos et al. (2006), in German by Meyer & Pelles (1981) and in French by Fichefet et al. (2008). In some cases other books in German were consulted: Ebert & Rennwald (1999), Thust et al. (2006), Weidemann (1995) and in French, Lafranchis (2000). The Dutch names correspond with Bink (1992), except for the Melitaeini which are here named ‘melitea’. In English books the species of the subfamily Heliconiinae are called fritillaries, included the species of the tribe Melitaeini which are ecologically different. The species of this tribe in America are called ‘checkerspots and crescents’ (Scott 1986) and in Europe: ‘Scheckenfalter’ in German and ‘melitée’ or ‘damier’ in French, names that express the difference between these two groups of taxa.
|
