Common Names versus Scientific Names

I saw an article once that investigated the relationship between 'caring about', general interest, and approachable nomenclature. I agree with the author of that article that there is a relation (I am avoiding judgemental words like correlation or causal connection) that goes both ways. People don't care if they can't relate to something, but also, true specific common names are not created when there is no interest. And just negative interest that generates names like Murder Hornet or Fire Ant or Kissing Bug or Brown Recluse is not really enough either: People love to throw those names at anything related (any wasp or ant or bug or spider in this case) that scares or stings them. There are other examples that are more positive like the 'common' names created for Butterflies, Tigerbeetles and Dragonflies. All three groups have a positive reputation to begin with, so English species names were created, just like for birds. How accepted are those? Are they just another layer of labels that we scientists now have to learn? Is the general public now more interested? That remains to be seen. Another question is of course how common common names really are. They can really only apply to the audience of a few countries where folks happen to use the same language (an easy decision for the author of a book that is usually written in only one language anyway. But insects do not live only within the borders of those countries (see US and Mexico) and people, especially naturalists tend to travel. Germans certainly do. In Germany the general interest in insects has always been greater and less negatively bent than in the US (my opinion). So over the last 30 years a German name has been assigned to just about every European insect species. Of course total numbers are small compared to the US/Mexico/American complex. But since Germans really do travel, they seem to have German names even for most species they photograph in the US. And the names are clumsy and long because they try to convey at least as much info as the scientific genus-species complex carries. For the birder: Grosser Rennkuckuck? The Roadrunner, who actually is related to Cuckoos. I left Germany before all those interesting names were coined. In each country I stayed in long enough I acquired a new set of hundreds of bird and mammal names (my brain was younger then) and I was very happy that most of the scientific names of insect and plant genera kept their validity. The splitting-off of New World species from Old World species that used to share the same genus name started more recently, and since that comes stepwise I try to keep up. But I still carry a lot of USAmerican Aphodius spp in my mind ....

Moving across the country in 1991

I just ran into this photo (by Amazing Nature) - I won't ever forget my last night in Florida before moving to AZ in 1991: Standing between flooded areas of Paines Prairie, shining lights over the water and catching the eye shine of scores of alligators. Standing in the way of a fire ant tribe on the move, probably because of the flooding. Suddenly feeling dozens of them attacking my lower legs, simultaneously, as if on command. The next day, on the way north in Tallahassee I ran into the big Limulus mating on the beach. I had never even heard of that phenomenon. Along several states, I 10 seemed to be the only road not under water. In Baton Rouge my motel neighbors were so noisy that I went over to ask what was going on: They were celebrating that they lost three boats in the storm (crab fishers) but nobody was killed. They invited me to their church the next morning. Texas was endless, but the peaches were great. A whole box of them was stored on the head rest of my car , their aroma competing with the stench of 3 huge dead Limulus that I could not leave behind. I saw ranches that bred paint mules as big as horses. In NM I was invited by an old mountain rancher to help round up his cattle. On the Continental divide my old Golf Diesel over-heated, being loaded with all my stuff and dragged up to some cliff dwellings in the San Juans. At the border to AZ a dust storm closed I 10 (it was the fourth of July). I arrived in AZ 4 days after leaving Gainesville with great memories and legs spotted with ant stings that seemed to last for weeks. All that was part of a totally unplanned move from my first US job that I hated to accept an invitation to work at the U of A instead. From the people who put me up for my first night in AZ I traded 2 dead Palo verde root borers for one of my Limulus skeletons, but their cat chewed them up before the night was over ...