MicrobeHunter.com Microscopy Forum

Plan 16x/0.35, DIC, 90µm width, 40 image stack in Photoshop (Diatoms were not lying very flat)
Plan 40x/0.65, DIC, 90µm width, 26 image stack in Photoshop

Great images of [literally] 'a beautiful little thing'

MichaelG.

@ MichaelG -- A fellow Latinist perhaps? A beautiful language and v. useful for biology though not for the lazy! As we used to say at school:

Latin is a dead tongue,
Dead as dead can be --
It killed the Ancient Romans
And now it's killing me!

Biddulphia pulchella is a beautiful little thing, as you say, and they are lovely photomicrographs.

SutherlandDesmids wrote:@ MichaelG -- A fellow Latinist perhaps? ...

Regrettably, I am not:
Although I do increasingly find the need to translate odd words and phrases, the sophistication of the grammar defeats me when I try working on even a short paragraph.

I was intrigued by the name 'Biddulphia pulchella' because Biddulph is not far from where we live.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biddulph

MichaelG.
.
.
Edit: I have just found this:
http://ssu.ac.ir/cms/fileadmin/user_upl ... _Unive.pdf
... so the day starts rather well.

Thanks MichaelG and SutherlandDesmids

Failed to catch the latin translation ...
When I do try and translate latin names I am always surprised at how prosaic they are.

Sorry I missed your earlier comment MichaelG

75RR wrote: Failed to catch the latin translation ...
When I do try and translate latin names I am always surprised at how prosaic they are.

I fear that this naming may actually be more prosaic than I suggested
http://www.algaebase.org/search/species ... s_id=37290
... but it was nice whilst it lasted.

MichaelG.

Another winner 75.

Interesting to see it live and "assembled".

Great stuff, thanks for posting

Many thanks rnabholz

Here is a previous one: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6636

MichaelG. wrote:

75RR wrote: Failed to catch the latin translation ...
When I do try and translate latin names I am always surprised at how prosaic they are.

I fear that this naming may actually be more prosaic than I suggested
http://www.algaebase.org/search/species ... s_id=37290
... but it was nice whilst it lasted.

MichaelG.

Incidentally, I think it might help to explain that pulchella certainly means ''fair little one'', but as Michael G says it's regrettably an invalid synonym, albeit a charming one. The original classification was into the Linnaean genus Conferva as Conferva biddulphiana J.M. Smith. Conferva is something of a waste-bucket taxon.

It was transferred to Biddulphia by S.F. Gray in 1821, but with an invalid change of the specific name to pulchella. Thus we have Biddulphia pulchella S.F. Gray nom. illeg. [nomen illegitimum].

I believe it was Boyer who restored the correct form, thus Biddulphia biddulphiana (J.M. Smith) Boyer

If you're not familiar with botanical nomenclature, a little Gordian Knot like this is considered a very simple case (!). I happen to greatly enjoy taxonomy, but I have an unusually dull mind! A real puzzler, like Pleurococcus Meneghini, would take a great deal longer to explain.

At the risk of ranging off topic, some Linnaean names are anything but prosaic -- the Atlantic puffin has the rather delightful binomial name Fratercula arctica (Linnaeus 1756) ''little brother of the Arctic'' from a fancied resemblance of the plumage to the (Dominican?) habit. The orca whale used to have a now obsolete binomial, ''Orca gladiator'' (Bonnaterre 1789) which needs no explanation.

It was transferred to Biddulphia by S.F. Gray in 1821, but with an invalid change of the specific name to pulchella. Thus we have Biddulphia pulchella S.F. Gray nom. illeg. [nomen illegitimum].

Know very little (read nothing) about botanical nomenclature, but I was under the impression that the double use of a name tends to indicate a “type” species.

Starting out as Conferva biddulphiana , a move to Biddulphia (while maintaining its name) would make it a “type” species. (Which is in fact what happened.)

As a latecomer to the genus that is a curious state of affairs and perhaps accounts for Grey's name change to pulchella, in order to avoid this.

Which makes sense, isn’t the “type” species meant to be the first or the most representative?

Being already at the limits of my knowledge on nomenclature ... I shall watch and learn.

Meanwhile; I have found some rather impressive images :

http://rbg-web2.rbge.org.uk/cgi-bin/nph ... sekey?5028
https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/15953/view
See also: https://www.sciencephoto.com/search?q=D ... lga,%20SEM

MichaelG.
.
.
P.S. It amused me to see this statment on the SEM image page:

Model release not required.

Well, I know nothing about said Biddy, but this is a the fine tome that I use to unpick an understand the binomial names in my Botanical pursuits - I find it very useful indeed to understand the meanings that are so often considered prosaic although personally I find a certain charm 'in there' also.

This gem of a book is not only a great help but, believe it or not, very interesting too!
(This was another of those deliveries, opened by my Darling Wife, that prompted the phrase "this is for you...." as often heard in my home.... ) Being a lover of Taxonomy I'm following this little discussion with interest. Thanks fellows.

John B.

Thanks for the images MichaelG

Has to be said ... SEMs are spectacular

Thanks for the tip mrsonchus.

Luckily archive.org has a copy:

https://archive.org/details/Botanical_Latin

75RR wrote:

It was transferred to Biddulphia by S.F. Gray in 1821, but with an invalid change of the specific name to pulchella. Thus we have Biddulphia pulchella S.F. Gray nom. illeg. [nomen illegitimum].

Know very little (read nothing) about botanical nomenclature, but I was under the impression that the double use of a name tends to indicate a “type” species.

Starting out as Conferva biddulphiana , a move to Biddulphia (while maintaining its name) would make it a “type” species. (Which is in fact what happened.)

As a latecomer to the genus that is a curious state of affairs and perhaps accounts for Grey's name change to pulchella, in order to avoid this.

Which makes sense, isn’t the “type” species meant to be the first or the most representative?

Yes and (sometimes!) no. The first point is valid, as I've made a bloody mess of explaining it. ''Transferred'' was perhaps the worst word I could have chosen!

In 1821 Gray erected Biddulphia as gen. nov. with B. pulchella as the type, rather than transferring it to a pre-existing genus. Having discerned the new genus and erected a type he transferred to it those scattered species he could more accurately recategorise.

The blunder was in erecting a new specific name for the new generic type rather than carrying over the old one.

The confusion is perhaps because Gray did not have a shufti down the microscope one day and discover an organism new to science. Rather, he rearranged more accurately 'plants' (actually chromists) previously miscategorised.

A similar situation can be seen in the genus Staurodesmus, a desmid-genus erected by Teiling in '48.

Arthrodesmus triangularis Lagerheim was transferred to be the type of the newly delineated genus ('for monospinous desmids'), retaining its old specific name (as Staurodesmus triangularis (Lagerheim) Teiling. If, for instance, Teiling had decided to change the specific name of his new generic type he would have fallen into Gray's error.

There's no absolute rule that the type requires a double-name though and that was not the reason for the change. It's good old priority again.

mrsonchus wrote:Well, I know nothing about said Biddy, but this is a the fine tome that I use to unpick an understand the binomial names in my Botanical pursuits - I find it very useful indeed to understand the meanings that are so often considered prosaic although personally I find a certain charm 'in there' also.

This gem of a book is not only a great help but, believe it or not, very interesting too!
(This was another of those deliveries, opened by my Darling Wife, that prompted the phrase "this is for you...." as often heard in my home.... )
ws_small_DSCN9864.jpg

Being a lover of Taxonomy I'm following this little discussion with interest. Thanks fellows.

John B.

That is a great book, but there is an error in that book. It incorrectly states the greek phaeo- means brown. It means grey or grey tinged with brown. Unfortunately, this error has seeped into quite a bit of scientific literature.


Now for nomenclature. There are very strict rules on names actually. Like, to the insane level that the rules read like laws and you need a lawyer to decipher the damn things. There are separate rules governing the naming of animals vs. plants and similar. Generally, the fungal world follows the botanical system. Anyway, the point I was going to make was that the rules governing plants and fungi do not allow the use of the double name, the genus and specific epithet being the same. So, no Gorilla gorilla for us.

mnmyco

Sincerest thanks. Unfortunately I am rather dangerous, the half-learned amateur. Somehow I have toddled through fifteen years of botanising either as pupil or amateur without noticing that rule. Again, as the above poster is well aware it's not absolute either that a zoological type bears such a name -- keeping to primates we do not have Pan pan, but Pan troglodytes (Oken, 1816) -- the common chimpanzee and type, as opposed to the bonobo P. paniscus (Schwarz, 1929). I am not enough of a zoologist to know how many of the original Linnaean types do.

Here is an interesting link with additional interesting links within it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenclature_codes


and for a bit of fun:

list of tautonyms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tautonyms

list of triple tautonyms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_triple_tautonyms