Sci-Fi Sundays: Galaxy, February 1965

The spaceship on the cover looks like Brussels Sprouts.

For anyone having trouble with the obscured text, it can be read on the BBS version.

First of all, I think @Nelsie properly ID’ed the beetle.

Look for the markings on the neck shield (pronotum), and the antennae. The depicted beetle has no scarab antennae, which look a bit like a club and bear lamellae, so you can rule out all Scarabaeidae. The colorado potato beetle Leptinotarsa decemlineata Say, 1824 is something like a poster child of the 60’s, the Wikipedia link gives you a faint idea why. :wink:

Second, what @silkox1 said needs reinforcement, @calebkraft.

Scientific names matter, since they are used to as exactly communicate what we are talking about as possible and as necessary. Please, pretty please with sugar on top and strawberries: use the proper scientific way of writing scientific names. First part capitalised, second part not capitalised, both italicised.

I don’t even insist on giving the author’s name.

[Kind-of-rant]

Communication matters for scientists. It would be great if journalists would help in communicating precisely. It may seem a small matter, but even italicised scientific names are a part of this.

The taxon you mentioned, @calebkraft, has only one scientific name, and one synonym.
With both names, you will find the correct name is Chrysina gloriosa (LeConte, 1854). For the record, the author name helps you find the original publication. For animals, author names are part of the taxon name, and it would be truely scientific to include the author and the year of publication this at least on the first mention if the scientific name, and pay attention to the brackets given. In the case of your Chrysina gloriosa, the brackets around the author and year tell us that the author originally described the taxon under a different name.

It was originally described as a member of the the genus Plusiotis, so there is a original combination of genus name and species epithet as Plusiotis gloriosa LeConte, 1854. (Without the brackets.) You now can look it up and see it was was described in 1854 in Proc. Acad.Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, pages 221-222. This description there should tell you what characters will distinguish the species from other species in the genus Pluritotis. Also, it should tell you what type specimen(s) was/were used to describe the taxon. This type specimen is of utmost importance: this, and only this, is the complete reference for the whole taxon. Every other specimen, in the end, directly be compared with this type specimen. If it differs from the type in ways which are signifcant (in case of beetles, usually you compare the genitalia), it is not the same taxon, so it will not bear the same scientific name.

Furthermore, via Wikipedia and Google scholar, e.g., you will also find out that the genus Chrysina Kirby, 1828 since 2001 includes all the species formerly included in Pluritotis, as described by Hawks in 2001.

Hence, we end up with ONE currently valid scientific name. The other name is also scientific - you are not completely wrong there - but it is a synonym, and even if some taxonomists stick with it, the majority of the scientific community will use Chrysina gloriosa (LeConte, 1854), and there should be no doubt about what exactly they are referring to. They have a type specimen to compare it to.

This, and more, is written down and defined in The Code. It helps us to bring order to our communications on the zoological part of nature. (Botany s.l. has its own code.)

The code also defines the way to print/display scientific names. So, if anyone wants to communicate about science, and uses scientific names, they should at least stick to the basics of the code.

As a biologists, non-italised scientific names annoy me immensly. I basically had the same discussion again and again with editors, journalist, designers, typesetters et al. who claim to present scientific topics to a wider audience. The variations of their bullshit includes “nobody cares”, “it interrupts fluent reading”, “it confuses the reader”, “italics are reserved for [some layout element, e.g. subheadlines]”, “it does look shitty”, and, infamously, “our font doesn’t have italics”.

I sadly shake my head at this attitude. But most of the time, I try to explain that this is unscientific, and loose temper after a while when they don’t see any point, still.

[/Kind-of-rant]

5 Likes

In Re: “the beetle”, it might be worth noting that the beetle, as an image and component of the picture’s composition, echos the larger armillary sphere in the picture. Part of the decision making process might have been visual and a need/desire to balance the picture in some way. Is it unreasonable to say that it simply looked good?

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.