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Certain exceptional historical circumstances shape the people who experienced them and decide to leave traces of those times as a memory for those who come after. Every city has statues and monuments commemorating some historical situation or event. Sometimes we try to immortalize tragedies surrounding people and activities. For example, in Valencia, Spain, you can still find plaques that say, “The flood has come here.” This refers to the flooding of the Turia River that flooded the city in October 1957, killing an unspecified number of people. In Scandinavia, there is a “Hunger Stone” which is carved and found at the bottom of rivers. If they are visible, it means it is a year of extreme drought, so the text that adorns them says something to the effect of “Cry when you see me.” Because if they are exposed, it is a clear sign of scarcity of water, poor harvests, and therefore starvation.
In science, when one’s job is discovery, new phenomena or elements may need to be named. There are different rules for this depending on the field. In medicine, it is very common to name the first person to describe or invent a technology, but historians later find out that the person they named was not actually the first. It often turns out that In chemistry, new elements are usually named in honor of other scientists or in reference to their geographic location, rather than named after their discoverer. For example, the chemical element curium was not discovered by Marie Curie, but she did discover polonium (named after her country of birth). In biology, the criteria for naming genes varies from organism to organism, but they should not be named after individuals. They are given names that describe the biological function of the gene. A sense of humor is often used with such nicknames. For example, a plant gene involved in the development of a flower’s male reproductive system is called “Superman” (the gene is capitalized), and a mutation in a fly gene called “Cheap・There is something called a date.
When naming new organisms, scientists follow Linnaeus’ binomial nomenclature. That is, the genus name is first in uppercase letters, followed by the species name in lowercase letters. Unlike other scientific fields, Latin words must be used here, and there is great freedom in the choice of names. Therefore, when naming a newly discovered organism, we have the opportunity to commemorate a specific event.
The greatest tragedy that humanity has experienced in recent years has been the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting lockdown. During this process, many scientists took the opportunity to present their discoveries and wanted to leave a mark for posterity about the difficult period in which they described new species. In April 2021, Biodiversity Data Journala new species of Trichoptera (insects with aquatic larvae and terrestrial larvae) has been identified and named potamophilus coronavirus. Beetle explanation in October 2021 Trigonoptera corona Published; as the authors pointed out, the name comes from the fact that the pandemic forced them to cancel their work in the field and focus on writing. There are also his two hornets with pandemic-related names. Stetantix Kodaconfirmed in Mexico in October 2020, Allologus qualentenus, confirmed in Brazil in April 2021. In this way, the novel coronavirus left its mark on the taxonomic record of posterity. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again.
JM Mulet is a professor of biotechnology.
Between “Star Wars” and Barça
It is not only human tragedies that lead to new zoological discoveries. Alexander Riedel, one of the discoverers of T. corona beetle (mentioned in the text), is a self-proclaimed fan of the Star Wars saga. Other species of the genus Trigonopterus that he named include T. ewok, T. chewbacca, and T. yoda, alternate names paying homage to George Lucas’s legendary character. In Cadiz, Spain, a spider was discovered in Alcornocares Park and was named Flegula blaugrana because of the striking coloration of the male’s abdomen, which resembles a Barça soccer jersey.
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