Common Names for Arachnids

A Google search of "Rabid Wolf Spider" returned 3,580 results from many websites, so the name is obviously very popular and/or in widespread use. And if it happens to be the only common name for that species, then it's the preferred one by default.

The word "Rabid" in the common name seems appropriate because it's based on the specific epithet rabida. Simple and memorable; sounds perfect to me.

not that big a deal to me. However, it's presumably not in the AAS list, which we are using as a standard, for some reason? And 3,580 Google results doesn't mean very much unless one confirms that all of those "hits" are from recent usage and are actually referring to precisely the same species. One could also presumably get thousands of "hits" by searching on a discarded/obsolete common name.

Sorry to be argumentative - I'm just a bit biased against using common names in general, unless they are strictly agreed upon or approved in some official way... I think the latin names are often quite beautiful and sufficient on their own.

I think the link to the AAS list is included to serve as a resource, not as "The Authority". It's not a bad idea to go with the AAS choice most of the time, but common names can't be completely standardized. Choosing one common name over another is often a purely arbitrary choice, and what makes a common name best for our purposes may not always coincide with the criteria used by a committee of experts.

The benefit of common names is that they're more familiar to those who aren't comfortable with Latin names- the overwhelming majority of those who use this site. That means they should reflect what people are likely to know something by, not necessarily what makes the most sense (the exception being those that are misleading).

for the feedback, all... I won't touch any of the other common names, then, for now. This conversation is difficult to hash out on the web - I'm not completely against common names either - I just think they often lead to miscommunication unless standardized. "Yellowjacket" being a great example. And the latin names can be very helpful - had a Gymnosoma fly today, I think - "naked body" - perfect for a tachinid without the usual hairs... I do call bees "little fuzzbuckets" sometimes when I see them, though.... :)

that really are in common usage somewhere rather than what amounts to English scientific names decided by and regulated by some committee. Regulate the scientific name, that's fine. But if people want to call something a Dirtdog or a Wartback, we would think that would be exciting and terrific and would love to hear about it. Jane calls antlion larvae "Doodlebugs"! and we think she has every right to do that if she wants. We don't care what a committee says.

We do agree with using scientific names, however, and you'll notice that when we comment on an image we will almost always use the scientific binomial.

we don't think it matters where. We say put it where you think best!

I changed the preferred common names on about 80 guide pages to the AAS standard. As suggested by the Balabans, I always kept the other names in "other common names". Not surprisingly, we don't have pages for many of the mites and exotic tarantulas that are on the AAS list. If anyone finds mistakes or other problems, feel free to correct them or email me and let me know.

Official common names of species are proper names and should be capitalized as is routinely done by ornithologists, the biologists with the most extensive experience contending with common names.

What's the proper capitalization etiquette for subject lines that continue into comments? Just kidding; I don't want to hijack this thread, although it is an interesting question - one that perhaps should conform more to local convention than the dictates of grammar.

with Mike.

I would argue that you should still capitalize these words if you are using them in page titles. However, if you are using the common name in text in the guide page, then you could leave them lowercase as needed.

to indicate that they are official common names for particular species

Example:

American black duck could pertain to any duck taxon found in the Americas that is black in color. It does not unambiguously pertain to any particular species or even genus.

American Black Duck pertains uniquely and unambiguously to the species Anas rubripes, a usage made official by the AOU checklist.

The American Black Duck is actually dark brown whereas the three American scoter duck species and the Muscovy Duck (the species known officially by this name as indicated by the capitalization; "Muscovy duck" could apply to any of the numerous duck species found in Moscow) are truly black.

The need to capitalize official common names of species should be obvious. It amazes me that supposed experts such as New York Times editors fail to grasp this.

.

they do use lower case letters for the common names in the title pages for the Nearctic Spider Database, for example:

http://www.canadianarachnology.org/data/spiders/15257

Having said that, I agree that it looks a little funny in the Guide. I'm definitely not an English major... Shall I wait for a while before I either continue, or go back and switch the capitalization on the ones I've done already??

with David. I say the arachnid guide is incorrect in that they are taking an important idea (that common names should be lower-case) and applying it overly forcefully to make a point (wilfully ignoring the precedence of capitalization in a title role).

common names should be capitalized in text, not just in titles. See any number of books or scientific papers about birds.

Thanks for the "warning." You're perfectly right to be "nit-picking." I am, however, critical of the passage you quoted and therefore of that part of the source document. I find it arrogant and heavily ironic. "Ironic" is my way of calling it "wrong" while it so rightiously assumes its omniscience.

Now, I'm a hack so perhaps I'm the arrogant one but the difference between Common House Fly and common house fly seems obvious and consequential; and that's just one of what must be untolled examples.

I'm all for agreement upon common names and I've advocated following them so I think this is a good project. Can anyone who isn't such a hack refute that quoted passage?

the passage certainly is "heavily ironic"

Now if authoritative bodies could agree on common names (and not be crazy) and BugGuide people could agree on authoritative bodies there may be some progress.

Here's a more recent thread with a litte more detail on the subject: http://bugguide.net/node/view/266702.

Thanks John.

I do think it looks better capitalized in a title. I can see how that might mislead someone to always capitalize it though. You could put in the remarks that the proper usage in text is "shamrock orbweaver," but that's more work for the editor. Don't let my comment stop you from adding common names to spiders; maybe some other folks will weigh in on the issue.

- in titles, capitalization seems to be standard in BugGuide, and elsewhere in insect ID books for that matter. Browsing through a few of mine at random, they either capitalize or do the entire common name upper case, which bypasses the question. : )

the species name is part of a proper name and is not affected by its usage in a title. For example, iPhone does not become Iphone.

that I didn't give much thought to at first.

It seems to me that since the common name is essentially just being added to a specific field in a database, the text in that field should reflect the capitalization specified in the reference document, else it is incorrect. It could always be converted automatically to a capitalized state by the BugGuide software in certain instances if needed, like when it is contained inside the <TITLE> tags.

Note that the species name is also lower case, making it equally incorrect if we are to consider these words to be the title of a document.

When a name is entered into the title field, the only context in which it appears subsequently is as a title - above an image, or on the guide page. So consistent capitalization seems perfectly appropriate to me. It would be great if the software automatically recognized the use and capitalized all titles, but since it doesn't, I think we should be consistent.

Another random browse through my field guides shows that species names are never capitalized even when part of a title, but always italicized. Perhaps there's a reference somewhere that codifies that practice. It's how we've got them here (at least, on guide pages - perhaps italicizing in Taxonomy etc. would be a useful improvement), and it looks fine to me. : )

And you could also say I'm not very observant. For some reason I thought the "Preferred Common Name:" field was also presented in it's own section somewhere on the guide page. I was obviously wrong. Since it is only showing up within the <TITLE> tags (which places it at the top of the browser application) and within the taxonomy list, it probably makes more grammatic sense to capitalize every word. Looking at the pages where I have added common names, I notice that I capitalized every word, apparently because it "looked right" at the time. I'm pretty sure that it is right, and that I spoke too soon with my initial comment.

I thought this whole "case" thing was pretty silly at first, but it turned out interesting.

Some references: I checked Kaston's "How to Know the Spiders"; common names are in a list format beneath the scientific name so every word is capitalized (title case). In "Spiders of North America" (Ubick, Paquin, Cushing and Roth) common names are in sentence format with a period at the end, so only the first word and proper nouns are captalized (sentence case). Both are probably correct based on how they are used.

Warren: Nothing is being willfully imposed by the AAS. They are stressing that these are not proper nouns and gave a few specific examples based on the rules of grammar. They just didn't give every possible example. Grammar rules can be confusing. I've probably made several mistakes just on this posting.

Also, I was being vaguely facetious with my lower-case species comment, but I reject your iPhone example anyway based on my opinion that any product or brand name that begins with a lower-case "i" should be shaved, sterilized and destroyed. For example, the iGrill. I'm so glad one of our brands used all upper-case when naming the IPEX bra. Otherwise I would have ran out the door screaming. (still facetious, just not so vague :-)

Ken: Much of the data contained in the Nearctic Spider Database is manually fed into an automated process, so David just left the names as found in the data extracted from the common names list. If desired, he could easily change the topmost instance by modifying the H2 parameter in his screen*.css files as shown by this example. I really like the way he does things over there. Have you noticed how the number in his URLs is not arbitrary?

David: Can we at least agree that "common house fly", regardless of capitalization, is not recognized as a valid common name? And that it is a series of words that contain the valid common name of "house fly"?

I meant to borrow Ken's example of Common House Spider vs common house spider. (I may prefer Common House-Spider! Possibly Common House-spider!)

Question: is this just for arachnids or are we considering something for all of BugGuide?

Part of my ... point is that I'm thinking common names are meant for common folk. This may be wrong. In any case, capitalization clearly indicates that a specific organism is being referred to and not a described individual organism, eg: Brown Mite vs brown mite, Giant House Spider vs giant house spider, Spotted Scorpion vs spotted scorpion, etc. I suggest this, like generic and specific names, be consistent throughout regardless of titles etc.

This is not the place to take-on the AAS but as an outsider with a fresh perspective I can here suggest to BugGuide that parts of the source document under consideration are NUTS! They imagine they're following the rules for capitalization but they do away with hyphenation and just make-up words by combining them?! Wow! And referring to Jumping Spiders (ordinarily I might not capitalize that) as "jumpers"? Whatever.

Insect, in this case arachnid, taxonomy is far behind other taxonomies and for very good reasons. These people are far more educated than I and have considered these matters infinitely more than I. I just hope there's no FBI-CIA thing going on in which they're being different just to be "distinguished" and ignoring that which has been worked-out elsewhere.

As an emotional appeal, people at BugGuide certainly champion bugs, give bugs the status of a proper noun!

you crack me up.

Hey, me too. Take it easy there David! I was going to respond, but I'm not real sure what the heck he's talking about now. I think if we just sit here and try to stay real quiet he might leave the thread. I hope so. He's starting to scare me. And I think I just saw a gun under his jacket.

sorry, duplicate comment

well it seems like we have some conflicting opinions on this issue! I don't mind going back and changing the names I've changed so far to upper case, but I don't particularly want to change ALL of them back later on...

Again, some possibilities, using one example:

Araneus trifolium shamrock orbweaver - recommended by AAS and what I've done for spiders in genera starting with the letter A.

Araneus trifolium Shamrock Orbweaver - better for a title?
Araneus trifolium Shamrock orbweaver - better for a title?

I'll hold off for a little while, I guess? It would be nice if Jeff or Lynette or the Balabans or any other interested parties would comment on this issue, I guess?

so we hadn't commented. We like Araneus trifolium Shamrock Orbweaver, but our only defense is that we like it, not that it fits in some grand scheme of logic somehow. Sorry

Some of our common araneids have a slightly different look, now, with lower case letters and slight name changes - takes a bit of getting used to... If there are any major protests, let me know now! Although much of this is silly details, I think it's good to use a standard reference for common names, and it may make it easier for folks to find our web pages with certain web searches?

Thanks for the input and advice, J&J. I'm off on vacation with my kids next week (hope to find some good bugs to photograph in Northern CA and OR), but will work on this when I get back... In the meantime, would love to get input from other arachnophiles on BG on whether this sounds OK to them...

Yes, good idea and the right thing to do. I've added those names to a few pages because I happened to be editing them, but never thought to go back and do the others.

Jay. I also noticed recently that a reference to the list of common names from the AAS comes up when we make species pages anyway, so I guess this has basically been agreed upon already at BG... I will work on making these changes.