What's in a name?

Forest and Bird, Issue 300, 1 May 2001, Unnumbered Page

What's in a name?

ANN GRAEME

notes that many creatures and plants vanish, unnamed.

he first step to knowledge is a name. Imagine there were no name words. A conversation might go like this: ‘I went with my tall, thin, handsome man to the rough-stemmed plant with wavy-edged leaves, to gather sweet, green skinned fruit. Was he my husband — or my lover? Were we gathering apples — or pears — or feijoas — or even melons? How clumsy, how imprecise

it would be to communicate without names. People of every race have made up names to briefly and accurately identify objects, but the most elegant naming system of all, which oils the wheels of scientific communication throughout the world, was invented by Carl Linnaeus in the mid-18th century. The ‘binomial’ naming system he invented is so practical, so sturdy and so logical that it remains in force to this

day. Binomial means ‘two names; and the system is to some degree similar to the present way we name people. With people, the first name, special to the person, comes first, and the surname comes second. So you may be called Jenny Baradine, and you know that you belong to the Baradine family and are related, albeit distantly, to all the other Baradines in the world. The binomial system puts the ‘surname’ — the genus — first, followed by the specific or species name. A genus is a grouping of the most closely related species. For example, the cat is Felis domesticus, Felis being the generic name, and domesticus being the special name just for the domestic cat. Its closest relations include Felis tigris, the tiger, and Felis leo, the lion. Similarly

our kauri, Agathis australis, is related to the Queensland kauri, Agathis robusta, and the Fijian kauri Agathis macrophylla. The genera are then grouped into families, families into orders, orders into classes, classes into phyla and finally, the phyla are finally united into the five kingdoms of living organisms. So the binomial naming system does more then accurately pinpoint each species: it provides a picture of the relationships between species, mirroring, as best we know, the pattern of their evolution. If the first step to knowledge is a name, we are a very long way from understanding the biodiversity of our world. About 14 million species are thought to be living at present. Of these, about 1.75 million species have been scientifically described, and thus given a name. These include a disproportionate number of large species, edible species and those of direct use to people. That leaves more than 12 million

species unnamed, unnoticed and hence unknown to us. These nameless species include the vast majority of insects, nematodes, fungi, bacteria and protists (tiny but important creatures such as protozoa). We may think them of little relevance to ourselves — if such a view should measure their importance — but we would be wrong. The more we learn about one species, the more we see its dependence on other species. For example, we now know that more than 90 percent of all plant species depend on a symbiotic relationship with particular fungi. The fungi need the plant roots for shelter and food, and the fungus left-overs provide the plant roots with essential nutrients. The more we look, the more intricate the relationships we find. The web of life is tangled beyond our imagination. At present the world’s biological diversity is declining for the first time since the catastrophic wave of extinctions 65 million years ago which wiped out the dinosaurs and half of Earth’s other species. We are the reason for the current wave of extinctions, as our species takes over the territory and the resources needed by other species. Around the world, about 52 percent of land ecosystems have been destroyed or disturbed by farmland, settlements, logging, mining and roads. In New Zealand, 63 percent of our natural habitat has been destroyed for farmland and a further 10 percent significantly degraded. This is not a happy scenario for our native biodiversity, which is more primitive in character — and more vulnerable — than that of many other countries. In only 30 human generations New Zealanders have eliminated 32 percent of the endemic land and freshwater birds, 18 percent of the endemic sea birds, unknown numbers of invertebrate species and greatly reduced

the numbers of most of the survivors. Of about 80,000 species of native animals, fungi and plants, only about 30,000 have been described and named. To protect our biodiversity, we need to identify and classify it, but declining too is the pure science of taxonomy. In New Zealand and around the world, research funds are increasingly being channelled into the applied sciences of ecosystem management, fisheries, bioprospecting and biotechnology. These are urgent and exciting tasks, and can generate money. Describing tiny beetles has no immediate commercial spin-off. Many taxonomists are elderly and retired, but their skills are of prime importance in protecting our biodiversity. In the current enthusiasm to encourage science graduates, we must include and provide jobs for young taxonomists. Somewhere, every day, another forest is felled, another grassland is ploughed, and another species becomes extinct, and we don’t even notice for it didn’t have a name.

— ANN GRAEME is responsible for the Kiwi Conservation Club of Forest and Bird. She lives in Tauranga. Footnote:

The statistical data for this article was taken from The State of New Zealand’s Environment published in 1997 by the Ministry for the Environment and available from them and from bookshops. It is a wonderfully comprehensive, well-written and fascinating account of our country and should be on the bookshelf of everyone interested in conservation. — A.G.

Names Can Change

ames are not set in stone. As taxonomists study species; they may find features which suggest that a species is better related to another genus than to the one to which it has been assigned. So in recent years, the original Podocarpus genus, which contained kahikatea, totara, miro and matai, has been split. Miro and matai are now placed in the genus Prumnopitys, and kahikatea in the genus Dacrycarpus. (Taxonomically justified, no doubt, but a source of annoyance to older botanists!) A number of native birds have also had their scientific names changed in recent years.

A human vanity

losely related species are generally given the same genus name, but our species, Homo sapiens, has a genus all to itself. This status dates from Carl Linnaeus himself, who wrote to a friend that he feared the clergy’s reaction if he were to classify humans and chimpanzees together. It is now known that, besides their physical and psychological similarities, humans and chimpanzees have 98.4 percent identical genes. Some scientists and philosophers now argue that a reclassification is long overdue.