Doesn’t matter, same argument applies.
Personally, I think everything should have a common name as well as a scientific one, but that’s a slightly different topic.
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I don’t know that your argument does apply. In most cases (especially in well-studied vertebrates such as mammals and birds), for all intents and purposes the monotypic genus and species within it are the same taxa. To me, it seems that having no common name on a monotypic genus in order to encourage people from picking the species-level ID may be better.
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Many (perhaps most) arthropods have no common name at genus or species level. I fail to see how omitting a common name at the genus level somehow encourages a user who might not know what the content of the genus is (one species or multiple) to select a species. Sure, if they investigate further they might see there is only one choice. But the omission of the generic common name isn’t going to definitively tell them that. It certainly wouldn’t tell me that for a genus I don’t really know. And for those who aren’t as fluent in the use of scientific names as the rest of us, the addition of the common name can be helpful (I had to look up Seiurus, mentioned above, as I didn’t immediately recognize what organism it was).
Mammals and birds are still subject to taxonomic revision. The dust hasn’t settled at all on name changes and splitting or lumping in those groups.
And now I’m repeating myself so will stop.
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Common names are for casual use and for people who don’t know the scientific names, which is most people. The knowledge and use of scientific names is something of a niche use (a big niche, to be sure, but still an exclusive on compared to the population at large).
Just because a layperson doesn’t know the scientific name of something doesn’t mean that they are unaware of it or don’t know about said animals, plants, etc.
Taking the stance that only scientific names be used and that common names are “not needed” is something of an elitist stance and one that serves to further the separation of science from the average person and make accessibility more difficult. This separation of science and inaccessibility of it is a major, and increasing, problem in large parts of the world, with the US being a key example of it and the problems that come with it.
I honestly find it baffling how often the “get rid of common names” argument comes up on iNaturalist, given that some of the stated goals are to make nature and science more accessible to the average person, not less accessible. Of all the citizen science platforms this is the one that should be embracing common names the most, and not just common names in English.
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Whoa there, a heads up that you’re directing your fire onto the wrong person with this tirade. From what I’ve seen over the last few years, @raymie is a huge proponent of common names and has indeed added them to many taxa. More than I personally thought made sense, to be honest. He just wants them to be actually, well, “common”.
The point of this thread is that having distinct common names for both a monotypic genus and the species it contains is likely an artificial construct from people trying to recreate the scientific taxonomy in the common name landscape. I agree with him on this. Common names have a role, but if you want a one-to-one correspondence for every node, then just use the scientific name! To use an example we keep referencing here, I don’t talk about ovenbirds and think of a bigger clade that might contain extinct or past/future lumped sister taxa to the one ovenbird. I’m thinking of that one species of ovenbird.
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It’s such a sore to my eyes when there’s a string of common names in a taxonomic tree and only genus shows in latin letters.
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You captured my perspective pretty well too.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that common names shouldn’t be on the site, and the “elitist” comment really seems unfair. From my experience at least, I legitimately just don’t run into common names being applied to monospecific genera off of the site.
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That wasn’t directed at @raymie as an individual, it was in response to the post as a whole and similar ones in the past.
I very much disagree with the idea the monotypic genus should be referred to only by the scientific names, we often refer to non-monotypic genus by a common name (although that does vary), often one that was originally derived from a specific species. That being the case, it seem silly to apply a different rule to monotypic genus. I’d go so far as to argue that doing so is kind of against the principle of having a uniform and predictable approach to naming, classification, etc.
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For what it’s worth, my position would be that we’re not doing this because there is actually no such thing as referring to a monotypic genus at all. By its very nature any attempt to do so creates a tautology that collapses back onto the single species it contains. Without having multiple species in the same genus you’ll have no way of telling which characters are synapomorphies for the genus level of the clade versus for the species’ level of the clade. So nobody should be trying to refer to “Ovenbirds” in general because any name is meaningless in that context, they’re just referring to “the Ovenbird” whether they meant to or not.
Now obviously there are a significant number of people who disagree with me on this on this forum, so I don’t think anything is going to come of this request or my perspective. But I figure I’d explain how I play out your thought experiment. I don’t think this means I am applying different naming rules for different kinds of genera. I see it as a more strict interpretation of the information content in our taxon names.
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I get the academic / philosophical argument here, even if I disagree with it, and not only for the practical reasons as discussed above. One can of course talk about genera, including their relationships to each other, without ever referring to the content of each genus (one species or multiple). Genus is just a category and you could say that no genera truly exist except as artificial file folders we use for organizational purposes.
So, for purely philosophical reasons, do we also purge common names for families and higher taxa that are represented by only one species, even if such names might be useful to an iNat user? Why stop with genus?
“Why stop at genus?”
Because, in these particular cases, those genera refer specifically to one species, and for all intents and purposes refer only to those species. I guess I’ll open up this discussion to monotypic families, as well.
For ovenbirds, perhaps you are correct. But I can see a use for it if a genus contains one extant and one or more fossil species. Hypothetically, “the Ovenbird” and some fossil Ovenbird would collectively be “Ovenbirds.” But then, that technically wouldn’t be monotypic anymore, would it?
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Yeah, it wouldn’t be monotypic anymore, so it doesn’t really apply here. The common name for “Ovenbird Warblers” is actually what promoted me starting this thread, since that name just seems so unnecessary.
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