"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." — William Shakespeare

Attaching a name, the correct name, to a species is fundamental to the role of a naturalist. How else to communicate to others about where a species occurs, changes in their distribution and abundance, and what role they might play in nature? Obvious right?

But not all that long ago that there was no universal method of communicating about the players on nature’s stage. Less than 300 years ago a plant or animal in your backyard, might have a different name depending where you found it; the same species was given different names depending on what country, or even what county you found it in. Then, a Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus, published his Systema Naturae in 1735, and everything changed. Like Darwin almost a century later, Linnaeus was not an impressive student, except in Linnaeus’ case when it came to plants, there he excelled. Linnaeus’ ambition was nothing less than the systematic naming of every plant, (and later animal) on earth. By the time he reached his 10th edition in 1758, (he published at least 12 editions before his death), he had classified 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants.

Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae started with a hierarchical classification, with each level of the hierarchy representing increasing levels relatedness between common members. The broadest level started with Kingdom, focusing on plants, fungi, and animals – although today we recognize seven Kingdoms: Bacteria, Archaea, Protozoa, Chromista (mainly algae) Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia. Next in the hierarchy was the Phylum, including levels such as arthropods, chordates (vertebrates), sponges, mosses, etc. Then came the Class, breaking down, for instance, chordates into mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, and vascular plants into conifers and several groups of flowering plants (Angiosperms).

At the next level were the Orders, for Reptilia that would include turtles, crocodiles, and squamates (lizards and snakes). For flowering plant Orders it would include Poales (grasses), Arecales (palms), and many others. At the closest levels of relatedness came the Families, Genera, and finally Species. For Reptilia you could then have Family: Iguanidae, Genus: Sauromalus, and Species: ater, the unique binomial, identifying this and only this species was then Sauromalus ater, the chuckwalla. Linnaeus used flower structures, the numbers and characteristics of petals, pistils, and anthers to classify every flowering plant species. For animals, he used hair, feathers, teeth, bird’s bills.

He took what on the surface seemed to be a chaotic amalgam of animals and plants and elegantly discovered their relationships and gave them names that could be and were used across borders, around the earth. Among the changes his system wrought included for the first-time whales and bats were known to be mammals, not fish or birds.

There are a few basic rules for naming species. One is that the first name that a species receives has primacy. Even if that name was first published in some obscure journal, that is the name it gets. If sometime later someone else who is not familiar with all the obscure journals believes they have found a new species, gives it a name, and publishes it in a more widely read journal, and if everyone begins using that new name for decades and decades, eventually someone will read through that initial obscure journal and recognize a species that now has two different names. Regardless of which name is more commonly used, the name given first is the one and only name it gets.

As a case in point, the chuckwalla (common name comes from the Native American name for it), used to be called Sauromalus obesus — translated from Greek it means flat, chubby lizard, an apropos description of these inscrutable lizards. Then, even after decades of everyone recognizing this beast as Sauromalus obesus, someone found an earlier published name, Sauromalus ater, which translates as flat, black lizard. Females of this species are taupe-colored, and only those males living on lava flows are mostly black. Still, rules are rules, and the name was changed, despite the rage of lizard-lovers everywhere. At least the common name is still chuckwalla, “a rose by any other name." These discoveries of earlier given names are rare, but they happen, and the older/correct name is never easily embraced by those of us that have the previous, commonly used name etched into our brains. Rules are rules.

Another reason for a name change is when new, more robust taxonomic tools are used, and previously identified relationships are found to be not congruent with the new data. With the explosion of better and better techniques for peering into DNA molecules and discerning genetic relationships, name changes, even up the level of Genus and Families are increasingly common, especially in plants.

An animal example is Blainville’s horned lizard, Phrynosoma blainvillii (translated to Blainville’s toad-bodied lizard) which was previously known as the coast horned lizard Phrynosoma coronatum (translated to crowned toad-bodied lizard). Originally, this species ranged from upper central California to the Cape Region of Baja California. More recent genetic analyses revealed that instead of one species, there are three species of lizards that replace each other across this range. Phrynosoma coronatum was originally described from lizards in Baja California’s Cape Region, so that name stayed the same for that “newly discovered” species. The California lizards were apparently originally christened in appreciation of Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville, a French zoologist born in 1777, although his connection to our horned lizard is not clear. Naming a species after yourself is not in keeping with taxonomic tradition, so someone must have named it in Blainville’s honor. Nevertheless, that was the earliest name given to this species in this part of its range, and so that is the name it has. Rules are rules.

The older I get the harder it seems to adjust to these name changes, however justified. Once I affix a name with a species, they become an old friend that I greet along the trail. Until I can affix a new name, I mourn the loss of that old friend.

Nullius in verba

Go outside, tip your hat to a chuckwalla (and a cactus), and be safe.