Great Crested Grebe and bird names.

["Philip Veerman" <>]

Yes it can look that way. When I was at school it was said that the scientific names are stable in time, as compared with popular names. I wonder if that was just a popular myth to placate / educate the young. I suspect the rate of change of scientific names is increasing. This is not a complaint, more of a comment.

 

I wonder if Martin meant sin or sign.

 

Philip

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: martin butterfield [
Sent: Tuesday, 15 June 2010 5:43 PM
To: Mark Clayton
Cc: Canberra Birds
Subject: Re: [canberrabirds] Great Crested Grebe and bird names.

Another trouble with scientific names is that IMHO
these days they are less stable than vernacular names as people change their
interpretations of DNA sequencing.  This is not just a sin of
ornithological taxonomists but any of the biological
sciences.

Martin

On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 5:33 PM, Mark Clayton <> wrote:

Which, when it is all boiled down, shows we should be using scientific
names. However I dread to think how many spelling mistakes we would get in
something like Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus (Black-necked Stork for those who
don't know the name) - it would also get away from the misnomer of Jabiru!

Mark