32
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Why do both the mango and the bee have "Indica" in their binomial name?
In short, we do not think about the uniqueness of the second part of the binomial (the species epithet) but about the uniqueness of the binomial itself (the genus and the species epithet). Thus, the ...
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25
votes
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Can 'human' become a genus due to space colonization?
The concept you are referring to is speciation and it has been well studied in a wide variety of different natural organisms. I suppose here we are talking about the biological species concept.
The ...
- 2,294
23
votes
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Explaining "paraphyly" for the layperson?
These are terms to describe names we give things that don't really follow phylogeny accurately. Fish, for example - a monophyletic group involving fish would include humans, too, yet there are many ...
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20
votes
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Can scientists name themselves in the scientific name when they discover a new taxon?
The answer is that in general, self-naming is severely frowned upon in the scientific community, but the act itself is not disallowed.
There have been at least two instances of self-naming recorded ...
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14
votes
What is the scientific name of this plant?
The plant is of Lamiaceae family and its common name is Shell Flower or Bells of Ireland.
Its "scientific" aka latin name is Moluccella laevis.
- 5,670
14
votes
What instances are there in which two species share the same binomial name?
There are four other instances of species-level hemihomonyms I can find:
Agathis montana can be either a critically endangered species of conifer or a parasitic insect.
Centropogon australis can be ...
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14
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Explaining "paraphyly" for the layperson?
One very simple example that most people are familiar with is the vernacular use of "animal". Most people recognize that humans are animals and more closely related to other animals than ...
- 521
12
votes
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Regarding the kingdom Animalia, which phylogenic tree is more common: Molecular Comparisons or Body-Plan Grades
Long story short, use sequence information if you can.
The long story long:
Sequence information and the trees generated from them are strictly more reliable than morphological characters. For ...
- 4,038
12
votes
Why do both the mango and the bee have "Indica" in their binomial name?
That is the species name it is often the same for unrelated organisms, that is why we use a two name system. Binomial nomenclature (literally, two term naming system) goes Genus species respectively.
...
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11
votes
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What is a subspecies?
In practice, subspecies are often fairly loosely-defined, reflecting a degree of uncertainty and ambiguity at this level of taxonomy. There are systematists who take the view that subspecies-level ...
- 3,304
10
votes
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Was the dodo a dinosaur?
Yes, dodos were dinosaurs, but that probably doesn't quite mean what you think it does.
Dodos were birds, closely related to pigeons. All birds are dinosaurs.
- 3,304
10
votes
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Binomial nomenclature: Why am I seeing different genera with the same species name?
Two different species can have the same species epithet if they belong to different genera ('species name' is referring to the full binomial name). Consider for example Pinus glabra and Ilex glabra
P....
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10
votes
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What are these two insects (or at least one of them)?
I the first insect is a cricket, female Fall Field Cricket,Gryllus pennsylvanicus.
It is widespread across much of North America.They are often found around areas of human habitation.
The the ...
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10
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What are these two insects (or at least one of them)?
After tiring hours of research of not knowing what even is the second bug's order I've finally found the second bug as other part of the answer.
The second bug is Slender meadow katydid, Conocephalus ...
- 233
9
votes
What is the scientific name of this evergreen plant?
The tree in question belongs to the Araucariaceae family,
There are multiple species of Genus Araucaria,
I'd place Araucaria araucana on the first place, but there are multiple others:
Araucaria ...
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9
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Can prawns be classified as fish, or is their position ambiguous?
Introduction to phylogeny
What makes that two species being closely related or not has nothing to do with whether they look a like or whether they live in similar environment. It has to do with their ...
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9
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Why the "cfr." in 'Cirrhipathes cfr. anguina' and not "cf."?
It's the same as cf. Both abbreviate confer-- meaning the specimen has most of the defining features of the species indicated, and the ID would likely be confirmed with comparison to reference ...
- 587
9
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How is the concept of species defined in asexual organisms?
There is no taxonomic category called "asexual organism". It is rather a phenotypic trait of scattered occurrence.
However the absence of sexual-reproduction in a group of organisms sometimes causes ...
- 2,669
9
votes
Animal specific names with non-alphabetic characters
Short Answer
Very few hyphenated specific epithets (i.e., species' names) exist due to the regulatory body (the ICZN) that governs the nomenclature code for animals. The code has multiple rules ...
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8
votes
How many (taxonomic) families are there?
The NCBI Taxonomy statistics page displays the following information:
There are currently 73540 genera, 331418 species, and 23127 taxa of higher order. Since the number of taxa decreases with the ...
- 9,434
8
votes
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Insect identification: white spotted beetle
It is a longhorn beetle (Cerambycidae), most certainly from the subfamily Lamiinae (flat-faced longhorns). The overall apparence with a downward-pointing face, partially divided eyes, robust build and ...
- 16.6k
8
votes
If birds are dinosaurs, then are mammals reptiles?
Reptile is not a clade - it is a paraphyletic group because it does not contain all descendants (i.e. birds) of a common ancestor. Humans are amniotes like birds and reptiles but while birds and ...
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8
votes
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Why is traditional rank based taxomomy considered by some as logically inconsistent with phylogenetic knowledge?
You can find discussions of problems with rank-based taxonomy in light of phylogenetics in Ereshefsky 1994, de Queiroz 1996 and Ereshefsky 2002. To summarize, the main problems they identify are:
It'...
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8
votes
Do common terms for animals such as amphibian or reptile fall somewhere in taxonomy levels?
This is all a matter of how we define terms, and which definitions are scientifically useful.
Traditionally (since Linnaean times), organisms were classified based on their outward similarities (...
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8
votes
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blackberry: what morphological features suggested the species epithet "bifrons"?
As @acvill pointed out, R. bifrons was named in 1821 by Lorenz Chrysanth von Vest. The original description can be found here (pages 163-164).
The latin bifrons translates to "two faces". I'...
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7
votes
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Why are Oxyuranus snake species named Taipan?
An answer is found at the Wikipedia page for Taipan:
The common name, taipan, was coined by anthropologist Donald Thomson after the word used by the Wik-Mungkan Aboriginal people of central Cape ...
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7
votes
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Colourful aquatic animal identification
This is the Sarcastic fringehead fish (Neoclinus blanchardi). [Source2]
- 5,670
7
votes
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What is the difference between a human being, a Homo sapiens, and a Neanderthal?
Homo sapiens / Homo sapiens sapiens
Human being, in the popular culture generally refers to modern humans, called either Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens. The existence of the two names will make ...
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