Saturday, November 30, 2013

The basic principles of biological nomenclature

1. Providing stability in the naming and classification of organisms is emphasized. Any taxon must have only one correct name.
2. If two or more names are already in use the correct name will be the one that was published earlier. This system is referred to as the law of priority.
3. If two or more workers at one particular time describe the same organism using different names, it results in synonyms. However only one name will be held as a valid name. The validity is provided to the senior synonym.(law of priority)
4. When names referring to two separate taxa of the same nomenclatural level are spelt the same, the two names are called homonyms. This situation arises when two separate authors used the same name to refer to two different taxa. This condition is called homonymy. In this situation the junior name is invalid and a new replacement has to be proposed.
5. A material on which an original description is based, gets a special status. It will form the basis for any future identity of a taxon. This idea is called the type concept. Thus the concept of a genus and species are fixed by their type genus or type species.
6. Names that were used prior to those included by Linnaeus in the “Systema Naturae”, tenth edition, 1758 are not recognised.
7. Scientific names must be either Latin or latinized. The name should be mentioned in italics.
8. The genus name should be a single word beginning with a capital letter.
9. The species name sholud be a single or compound word beginning with a smalll letter.

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