The scope of literature on the meaning and creation of biological names is relatively small, although many books on systematic biology will include more or less detailed cross-references. I have taken up the history of biological naming—especially that done before Linnaeus’s time—anecdotally and without the claim of comprehensiveness. Regarding the history of biology, as far as evolution and systematic biology are concerned, Ernst Mayr’s The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Belknap Press, 1982) is a must-read. Mayr is one of the most important evolutionary biologists in recent history and has been a great force in popularizing evolutionary theory. He has written a number of other books that approach the topic from various angles. Leading the charge is Principles of Systematic Zoology (McGraw-Hill, 1969), which builds on the book Mayr coauthored with Gordon Linsley and Robert Usinger, Methods and Principles of Systematic Zoology (New York 1953). This first book of Mayr’s on systematic biology is rarely referenced today, but it includes a number of fascinating observations on taxonomy and naming that are missing from the later books.
A nicely written, popular account of scientific animal and plant names and their history, if somewhat light on theory, is provided by British mycologist John Wright in The Naming of the Shrew: A Curious History of Latin Names (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).
The literature relevant to this chapter was referenced in the text and should thus be accessible to readers. The history of Hitler’s intervention in the (re)naming of shrews and bats was especially well documented by Rainer Hutterer at the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn (Rainer Hutterer: “Berlin und die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Säugetierkunde,” in: Bongo 31 2001).
For those who’d like to try their hand at describing a new species or learning the intricacies of animal naming, there’s no way around diving into the nomenclature rules. The original 1999 version is available in print in French, English, and German (published in 2000). The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature also has a website (http://iczn.org) where users can access the Code in various languages. The page also includes a link to ZooBank, the official online register for zoological nomenclature.
Surprisingly few books could be considered taxonomy textbooks in a broader sense. Although this title largely neglects theoretical bases, the most comprehensive and current presentation of practical taxonomic methods is Judith E. Winston’s Describing Species: Practical Taxonomic Procedures for Biologists (New York 1999).
The history of pre-Linnaean nomenclature and the examples given in this chapter are drawn in part from Winston’s book and from Mayr, Linsley, and Usinger’s Methods and Principles of Systematic Zoology (see above). The information on Gessner’s bird book and its historical connections to authors of antiquity was borrowed from Das Vogelbuch von Conrad Gessner (1516–1565). Ein Archiv für avifaunischen Daten (The Bird Book of Conrad Gessner (1516–1565): An Archive of Avifaunal Data) by Katharina B. Springer and Ragnar K. Kinzelbach (Berlin, Heidelberg 2009).
More has been written on the honeybee than on most other insects, but a formal clarification of its confused nomenclature is hard to come by. American bee researcher Michael Engel composed a summary of all 178 species-group names and synonyms in the genus Apis in “The Taxonomy of Recent and Fossil Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Apis),” in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research (No. 8, 1999).
Embedded within a cultural history of the London Natural History Museum, Richard Fortey illustrates the art of species description with inimitable élan in Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum (London 2008).
General information on the “Chilean Blob” can easily be found online. A year after the find, biologist Sidney Pierce and his colleagues published the findings of their scientific evaluations of the tissue, including determining that it was the remains of a sperm whale, in “Microscopic, Biochemical, and Molecular Characteristics of the Chilean Blob and a Comparison With the Remains of Other Sea Monsters: Nothing but Whales,” in Biological Bulletin (206 [3], 2004).
I drew the tangled synonymy of Mellinus crabroneus from the Internet-based Catalog of Sphecidae sensu lato (http://www.calacademy.org/scientists/projects/catalog-of-sphecidae) with the permission of my dear friend and colleague Wojciech J. Pulawski at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. I had some previous experience with this exercise in zoological nomenclature—albeit in different form—working with Ulrich Moritz, Agnieszka Pufelska, and Hanns Zischler’s book, Journey to the Interior: A Tour Through Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin 2010).
Herbert Wendt’s Out of Noah’s Ark: The Story of Man’s Discovery of the Animal Kingdom (Houghton Mifflin, 1959) contains a trove of information on the discovery of many extraordinary animal species. For instance, it contains extensive accounts of David’s discovery of the giant panda, the Père David’s deer, and the golden snub-nosed monkey. Given space constraints, I was able to include only the first two, but it would have been worth including the story of the golden snub-nosed monkey—that beautiful ape with the colorful face.
BIOPAT has an informative website that can be viewed in English (http://biopat.de). Thanks to extensive press coverage, especially in its first years, numerous articles on the organization can also be found. Worth reading is “What’s in a Species’ Name? More Than $450,000” by Bijal P. Trivedi (in: Science 307, 2005).
The source I relied on most heavily for information on Henry Fairfield Osborn was Louie Psihoyos and John Knoebber’s Hunting Dinosaurs (New York 1994), which also provided the bulk of information on the absurd tale of Edward Drinker Cope. The history of the American Museum of Natural History in New York was presented rather anecdotally in Douglas J. Preston’s Dinosaurs in the Attic (New York 1986). It’s a worthwhile book that contains lots of information on Osborne, Roy Chapman Andrews, and the museum’s many expeditions. Much has been written about the Bone Wars, but my primary resource was The Gilded Dinosaur: The Fossil War Between E.D. Cope and O.C. Marsh and the Rise of American Science (New York 2000) by Mark Jaffe.
Andreas Sentker’s commentary on the Oviraptor, “Ausbruch aus der Vitrine” (“Escaping the Display Case”), appeared in the January 19, 1996, edition of the German daily newspaper Die Zeit.
One of the sources I used most extensively for the linguistic perspective on proper names was Damaris Nübling, Fabian Fahlbusch, and Rita Heuser’s fantastic book, Namen. Einführung in die Onomastik (Names: An Introduction to Onomastics) (Tübingen 2012), which thankfully appeared at the moment I needed it. Plenty of other works have been published on the topic, but I drew concrete points from the following works: Einführung in die Terminologiearbeit (Introduction to Terminology Practices) by Rainer Arntz, Heribert Picht, and Felix Mayer (Hildesheim, Zurich et al. 2009), Eine Zeitreise zu den Ursprüngen unserer Sprache. Wie die Indogermanistik unsere Wörter erklärt (A Trip Back in Time to the Origins of Our Language: How Indo-European Studies Can Explain Our Words) by Harald Wiese (Berlin 2010), and The Science of Words by George A. Miller (W.H. Freeman & Co., 1991).
When it comes to questions about the definition or history of biological terms, Georg Töpfer’s impressive three-volume Historisches Wörterbuch der Biologie (Historical Lexicon of Biology) (Stuttgart, Weimar 2011) is the superlative source. Its entries can also be found online, some including supplementary details, at http://www.biological-concepts.com.
Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen’s modern classic, Logical Propaedeutic: Preschool of Reasonable Discourse (Rowman & Littlefield, 1984), proved helpful. I also consulted the Wikipedia pages on the following search terms: “Name,” “Proper Name,” “Appellative,” and “Semiotic Triangle.”
It’s difficult to recommend literature on species concepts in biology, given the sheer number of books and journal articles written on the subject. Many publications will exhaustively argue a certain preferred concept, and it’s not uncommon to be left wishing for a more measured approach with regard to other concepts as well.
Ernst Mayr, who was mentioned earlier and whose books are considered classics at this point, provides a good—albeit somewhat dated—overview in his publications, including references to seminal works written on the major species concepts. Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (Harvard University Press, 1989) provides a good introduction to the “species-as-class-or-individual” quandary. There are too many other publications on the topic to list here. Zoologist Johann Wolfgang Wägele provides a helpful introduction to the theoretical underpinnings relevant to systematic biology in his textbook, Foundations of Phylogenetic Systematics (Friedrich Pfeil, Munich 2005). As far as I know, this book contains the only competent representation of the function of language for systematics and taxonomy.
The documentation of Louie Psihoyos and John Knoebber’s journey with Edward Drinker Cope’s skull in the backseat of their van is truly worth seeing, and Hunting Dinosaurs (1994)—which has long since gone out of print but can be found from time to time in used bookstores—comes highly recommended. It’s worth taking a look at the book if only for Psihoyos’s photographs of dinosaurs and dinosaur researchers, not to mention his entertaining prose. It also includes a brief section on Cope’s life, as well as a summary of the history of North American dinosaur research.
Otherwise, I used the following literature:
Biographical information on Cope: Davidson, Jane, The Bone Sharp. The Life of Edward Drinker Cope (Philadelphia 1997).
Type specimen of Archaeopteryx siemensii: Ohl, Michael, “Von Namen und Namensträgern: Archaeopteryx und der Typus des Menschen” (“On Names and Name-Bearers: Archaeopteryx and the Human Type Specimen”), in: Damaschun, Ferdinand / Hackethal, Sabine / Landsberg, Hannelore / Leinfelder, Reinhold (ed.), Klasse, Ordnung, Art. 200 Jahre Museum für Naturkunde (Class, Order, Species: The Museum für Naturkunde Celebrates 200 Years) (Rangsdorf 2010).
Does a species description need a dead holotype? A number of publications on this topic are available in the journal Zootaxa, such as “New Species and Subspecies Descriptions Do Not and Should Not Always Require a Dead Type Specimen” by Thomas M. Donegan, in: Zootaxa (No. 1761, 2008) or “Nomenclatural Availability of Nomina of New Species Should Always Require the Deposition of Preserved Specimens in Collections: A Rebuttal to Donegan” by André Nemésio, in: Zootaxa (No. 2014, 2009). Ramana Athreya’s original description of Liocichla bugunorum was published as “A New Species of Liocichla (Aves: Timaliidae) from Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, Arunchal Pradesh, India,” in Indian Birds (2 [4], 2006).
With regard to the human type specimen: Stearn, William Thomas: “The Background of Linnaeus’s Contributions to the Nomenclature and Methods of Systematic Biology,” in: Systematic Zoology (Vol. 8, 1959); Psihoyos, Louie / Knoebber, John, Hunting Dinosaurs (London 1994); Spamer, Earle E., “Know Thyself: Responsible Science and the Lectotype of Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758,” in: Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (Vol. 149, 1999).
With regard to Carl Linnaeus: Goerke, Heinz, Carl von Linné. Beiträge über Zeitgeist, Werk und Wirkungsgeschichte (Carl Linnaeus: Reports on Zeitgeist, Corpus, and Impact) (Göttingen 1980) and many other biographies.
With regard to anthropometry: Gould, Stephen Jay, The Mismeasure of Man (W.W. Norton & Company, 1981); Spitzka, Edward Anthony, “A Study of the Brains of Six Eminent Scientists and Scholars Belonging to the American Anthropometric Society, Together with a Description of the Skull of Professor E.D. Cope,” in: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (xxi, 4 1907).
All of my information on Benedykt Dybowski is drawn from the works of Carsten Eckert, in particular from his article, “Die ‘zweite Entdeckung’ des Baikalsees durch die Brüder Dybowski” (“The ‘Second Discovery’ of Lake Baikal by the Dybowski Brothers”), in: Natur und Museum (No. 137, 2007), and from Dybowski’s memoir (edited by Eckert, Daniel Schümann, and Christian Prunitsch), Transbaikalien. Erinnerungen an meine sibirische Verbannung (Transbaikalia: Memories of My Siberian Exile) (Bamberg 2013). The nomenclature commission’s “Opinion 105” can be found online (http://biostor.org/reference/67131), as can Dybowski’s original articles.
Many lists of unique animal names, both annotated and not, can be found online. The most extensive of these lists is probably “Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature” (http://www.curioustaxonomy.net), while that with the most interesting names is Doug Yanega’s “Curious Scientific Names” (http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html).
Worth reading is a highly amusing article on bizarre names by entomologist May Berenbaum, who is known (among other things) for her column “Buzzwords” in American Entomologist, a quarterly magazine for bug enthusiasts. The article, titled “Apis, Apis, Bobapis,” appears alongside a selection of other columns Berenbaum compiled in her book, Buzzwords: A Scientist Muses on Sex, Bugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll (Washington 2000). “Apis, Apis, Bobapis” also provided the story that Hermann Haupt was attempting to rename Roechlingia hitleri.
Arthur Maitland Emmet’s The Scientific Names of the British Lepidoptera: Their History and Meaning (Colchester 1991), from which I quoted the crossword analogy, is a must-read. Other books and articles include etymological explanations for certain animal groups, but it’s a fairly modest number. Whenever I had an etymological analysis in hand, I would avoid researching the original publication containing the respective name, which is otherwise standard practice. A good example is the etymology of the snakefly names penned by Horst and Ulrike Aspöck, which was published recently and is a lot of fun to read: “Where Do the Names Come From? The Valid Extant Taxa of the Snakeflies of the World: Systematic List and Etymology,” in: Entomologica Austriaca (No. 20, 2013).
The incredibly informative webpage “History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications” (http://atlantic-cable.com) closely documents the numerous attempts to lay the transatlantic cable.
Much has been published on Bathybius haeckelii. Stephen J. Gould takes on two of these chimeras at once (Bathybius and Eozoon) in his collection of essays, The Panda’s Thumb (W.W. Norton & Co., 1980). The original description can be found here:
I also availed myself of two further works:
Peter Jäger’s extensive study of the huntsman spider genus Heteropoda can be read in its entirety here: Jäger, Peter, “Revision of the Huntsman Spider Genus Heteropoda Latreille 1804: Species with Exceptional Male Palpal Conformations from Southeast Asia and Australia,” in: Senckenbergiana biologica (No. 88, 2008).
I selected and researched the individual examples of patronyms according to my own tastes entirely. A complete bibliography would exceed the scope of these notes, and I’m sure readers can manage to find the species descriptions that interest them.
Beyond the original description of Anophthalmus hitleri, I read a number of articles and blog posts on “Nazi beetles,” for instance, “Fans exterminate ‘Hitler’ beetle” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/fans-exterminate-hitler-beetle-6232054.html).
The letters from the proud strawberry and rose breeders who wanted to name their creations after Hitler but weren’t allowed to were drawn from Die Rückseite des Hakenkreuzes. Absonderliches aus den Akten des Dritten Reiches (The Backside of the Swastika: Oddities from the Files of the Third Reich, not yet translated) (Wiesbaden 2005), edited by Beatrice and Helmut Heiber.
While I was writing this book, the hundredth anniversary of Alfred Russell Wallace’s death was celebrated. In his honor, a number of books were published, including a work mentioned in this chapter and written by my friend and colleague Matthias Glaubrecht, which should be highlighted and recommended once more: Am Ende des Archipels. Alfred Russell Wallace (At the Archipelago’s End: Alfred Russell Wallace) (Berlin 2013). Furthermore, Wallace’s own publications, numerous secondary sources, and lots of additional information and links can be found on George Beccaloni’s webpage, “The Alfred Russell Wallace Project” (http://wallacefund.info).
The work of Daniel Bebber and others on the influence that “big hitters” have on the discovery of botanical diversity was published under the title, “Big Hitting Collectors Make Massive and Disproportionate Contribution to the Discovery of Plant Species,” in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (279/1736, 2012).
Pjotr Oosterbroek succinctly reported on the life and works of Charles P. Alexander in his article, “On the 11,755 Insect Taxa Named by Charles P. Alexander,” in: Zoosymposia (No. 3, 2009).
Friendly (and less friendly) remembrances were published on Francis Walker’s scientific legacy directly following his death, and thanks to his significance to so many insect groups, biographical pieces still pop up from time to time in connection with taxonomic works. The most balanced biography must be attributed to Oxford entomologist M. W. R. de V. Graham, whose article was published with the lovely title, “‘Ambulator’: Francis Walker, English Entomologist (1809–1848)” in the Entomologist’s Gazette (No. 30, 1979). The article cross-references most of the obituaries written, including J. T. Carrington’s famously scathing piece.
Robert Constantin provides a short biography of Maurice Pic in his article, “Mémorial des coléoptéristes français,” in: Supplément au Bulletin de Liaison de l’ACOREP (No. 14, 1992).
Information on Thomas Lincoln Casey, Jr., was drawn from Lee H. Herman’s “Catalog of the Staphylinidae (Insecta, Coleoptera): 1758 to the End of the Second Millennium. Vol. 1, Introduction, History,” in: Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History (No. 265, 2001).
Edmund Reitter’s life story is told in his obituary by Franz Heikertinger: “Edmund Reitter. Ein Nachruf” (“Edmund Reitter: An Obituary”), in: Wiener Entomologische Zeitung (Viennese Entomological Newspaper) (No. 38, 1920).
I collected biographical information on Edward Meyrick from the introduction to the first volume of the Catalog of the Type Specimens of Microlepidoptera in the British Museum (Natural History) Described by Edward Meyrick (London 1969) by John Frederick Gates Clarke; from A. J. T. Janse’s introduction to Edward Meyrick’s work, On the Types of South African Microlepidoptera (Cape Town 1968); and from A. W. Hill’s obituary, “Edward Meyrick: 1854-1938,” in: Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society (2/7, 1939).
A plethora of biographies and obituaries have been written on Walther Arndt, some emotionally overwrought—either given the writers’ unfiltered alarm or the underlying influence of antifascist East German propaganda—whereas others focus more heavily on verifiable facts. I relied primarily on the following biographical texts:
Ferdinand Pax’s “Walther Arndt: Ein Leben für die Wissenschaft” (“Walther Arndt: A Life Given to Science”), in: Hydrobiologia: The International Journal of Aquatic Sciences (4 [3], 1952).
“Walther Arndt, ein Opfer des faschistischen Gesinnungsterrors” (“Walther Arndt: A Sacrifice to Fascist Anti-Intellectual Terror”) by Günther Peters, in: Forschen und Wirken. Festschrift zur 150-Jahre-Feier der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 1810–1960 (Research and Impact: Festschrift in Honor of the 150th Anniversary of Humboldt University, Berlin, 1810–1960) (Berlin, 1960), edited by Willi Göber and Friedrich Herneck.
Dietrich Kühlmann’s “Professor Dr. Dr. Walther Arndt. Wissenschaftler und Antifaschist, Kustos am Museum für Naturkunde Berlin 1921-1944” (“Professor Dr. Dr. Walther Arndt: Scientist and Anti-Fascist, Curator at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, 1921–1944”) (Berlin 1985).
“Der Wissenschaftler und Antifaschist Professor Dr. Dr. Walther Arndt” (“Scientist and Anti-Fascist, Professor Dr. Dr. Walther Arndt”), a special publication by the Museum für Naturkunde at Humboldt University, Berlin, in 1983.
Martin Eisentraut’s “Vom Leben und Sterben des Zoologen Walther Arndt. Ein Zeitdokument aus Deutschlands schwärzesten Tagen” (“On the Life and Death of Zoologist Walther Arndt: A Contemporary Document from Germany’s Darkest Days”), printed in: Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin (Proceedings of the Berlin Society of Friends of Natural Science) (New Series 26, 1986).
Finally, Günther Tembrock’s remembrance, “Walther Arndt, eine Erinnerung an den 26. Juni 1944” (“Walther Arndt: Memories of June 26, 1944”), in: Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin (New Series 33, 1994). Arndt’s own publications are referenced clearly enough in the chapter to allow readers to find them. Reprints and originals can be found in the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin.
The history of the German Zoological Society, with particular emphasis on its emergence, is detailed in Armin Geus and Hans Querner’s book, Deutsche Zoologische Gesellschaft 1890–1990. Dokumentation und Geschichte (The German Zoological Society, 1890–1990: Documentation and History) (Stuttgart, New York 1990).
Colin Groves and Peter Grubb’s Ungulate Taxonomy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011) was met with plenty of contrasting views, but I focused primarily on the article, “Are There Really Twice as Many Bovid Species as We Thought?” by Rasmus Heller et al. (in: Systematic Biology 62 [3], 2013). The discussion continues in this scientific journal and others to this day.
The sources I used for species number estimates and the rationale behind them should be cited well enough in the text to make them easy to find. Because not too many people have addressed this topic over the past 250 years, more recent authors can be relied on to reference the same sources, and that helps. The authors of the eighteenth century and their attempt to express nature in numbers are profiled in The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, et al., 1990), edited by Tore Frängsmyr, Robin E. Rider, and J. L. Heilbron. The chapter written by Gunnar Broberg, titled “The Broken Circle,” is an especially rich source of information on eighteenth-century encyclopedists.
Background information on Terry Erwin came from various sources, but most was drawn from Rob Dunn’s wonderful book, Every Living Thing: Man’s Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys (HarperCollins, 2009).
I highly recommend Frederik Sjöberg’s books, which have been translated into English as The Fly Trap and The Art of Flight, which includes The Raisin King. Although The Art of Flight may be somewhat disappointing to readers interested in biology, Sjöberg’s exploration of “strange passions” and the people subject to them—which parts of my book examine as well—is a true pleasure to read.
The anecdote about Hans Malicky’s invented flea species comes from Horst Aspöck in Vienna, one of the best-known experts on the idiosyncrasies of Austrian entomology. He mentions the fleas explicitly in his article, “25 Jahre Österreichische Entomologische Gesellschaft” (“25 Years of the Austrian Entomological Society”), in: Denisia (No. 8, 2003). Otto Suteminn’s publication, “Ergebnisse der zoologischen Forschungen von Dr. Z. Loew in Nepal” (“Results of Zoological Studies by Dr. Z. Loew in Nepal”), appeared in the Zeitschrift der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Österreichischer Entomologen (Journal of the Austrian Entomologists’ Association) (No. 21, 1969), while F. G. A. M. Smit’s bemused commentary, “Notes on Two Fictitious Fleas From Nepal,” was printed in the Entomologisches Nachrichtenblatt (Entomological Bulletin) (19/3, 1972/1974).
Otherwise I used the following literature, usually including background information on individual works directly in the text:
The connection between linguistic and physical order in natural history collections is nicely presented in “Vorstoß ins Innere. Ein Cine-Interactive” (“Journey to the Interior: A Cine-Interactive”) (Berlin 2011) by Juri Hwan and Andreas Kratky, a booklet accompanying the book Journey to the Interior: A Tour Through Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde (Berlin 2010) by Ulrich Moritz, Agnieszka Pufelska, and Hanns Zischler.