20 replies to this topic

[CampoKing]

These were some informal names for common carpenter ant species that I thought accurately reflected their common ranges.  Some are obvious and already used in science, and others I invented myself.  Who agrees with my choices?

 

Camponotus pennsylvanicus – the Eastern carpenter ant

Camponotus modoc – the Western carpenter ant

 

Camponotus vicinus – the Desert carpenter ant

Camponotus herculeanus -- the Canadian carpenter ant (or Swedish carpenter ant)

 

Camponotus subbarbatus – the Northern small carpenter ant

Camponotus nearcticus – the Southern small carpenter ant

[Nathant2131]

Both C. subbarbatus and C. nearcticus can be found in both the North and South in similar abundance, so a common name of only one cardinal direction wouldn't make the most sense.

[LC3]

I believe the Entomological Society of America has a common names database. I remember GCsnelling a while back mentioned something about an "official common names" list maintained by the ESA. Also as mentioned by Nathan, at least 4 of the species listed (C. vicinus, C.herculeanus, C. subbarbatus and C. nearcticus) have much more widespread ranges than those common names would imply.

 

C. herculeanus in particular might be one of the most widespread of the species of carpenter ants, spanning around half of N. America and Asia and all of Europe, it most likely just so happens to be that its adaptiveness is also what lead it to colonize the harsh north much more easily than other ants.

[FSTP]

Camponotus fragilis - The Fra-gee-lay carpenter ant AKA the Italian carpenter ant.

[CampoKing]

I believe the Entomological Society of America has a common names database.

 

There is indeed a common names reference at https://www.entsoc.org/common-names but the search results for the Camponotus genus are meager:

 

[gcsnelling]

Meager is as it should be, common names are ridiculous and should not be used. "  Camponotus fragilis - The Fra-gee-lay carpenter ant AKA the Italian carpenter ant. Say what? "The Italian carpenter for a North American desert species". That is absurd. Abbreviations such as "Camponotus" and Pogonomyrmex are equally stupid and should never be used.

[CallMeCraven]

Meager is as it should be, common names are ridiculous and should not be used. "  Camponotus fragilis - The Fra-gee-lay carpenter ant AKA the Italian carpenter ant. Say what? "The Italian carpenter for a North American desert species". That is absurd. Abbreviations such as "Camponotus" and Pogonomyrmex are equally stupid and should never be used.

Semi related, mostly due to my own curiosity. I was wondering if entomologists use four letter abbreviations for species names during their field work, similar to what I use on my data sheets as an ecologist with the gov. For example Pseudoroegneria spicata shortens to PSSP6.

[Nathant2131]

Meager is as it should be, common names are ridiculous and should not be used. "  Camponotus fragilis - The Fra-gee-lay carpenter ant AKA the Italian carpenter ant. Say what? "The Italian carpenter for a North American desert species". That is absurd. Abbreviations such as "Camponotus" and Pogonomyrmex are equally stupid and should never be used.

Yeah, common names seem to work only as placeholders for the general public from what I've seen. Your average Joe probably wouldn't be very comfortable with belting out in Latin to name an organism.

[Ferox_Formicae]

 

Meager is as it should be, common names are ridiculous and should not be used. "  Camponotus fragilis - The Fra-gee-lay carpenter ant AKA the Italian carpenter ant. Say what? "The Italian carpenter for a North American desert species". That is absurd. Abbreviations such as "Camponotus" and Pogonomyrmex are equally stupid and should never be used.

Yeah, common names seem to work only as placeholders for the general public from what I've seen. Your average Joe probably wouldn't be very comfortable with belting out in Latin to name an organism.

 

If I'm ever talking to someone who I know doesn't know any ant genus and species names, I will just make up a common name on the spot. For example, if I'm telling someone about the biggest ant I ever saw, a Camponotus ocreatus queen, I will stop for a second, think, and then just make up a common name, the Black-headed Carpenter Ant. I do that a lot of the time just to save myself from having to explain what the ant is.

[CampoKing]

Informal names or not, I think we can agree that pennsylvanicus/modoc/vagus and others seem similar enough to form a species complex, but does anyone know if that complex has an official name?  For example, the ant Tetramorium caespitum is one of several very similar (so-called cryptic) species that together form the Tetramorium caespitum complex.  Does anything similar exist for carpenters?  I haven't seen anything yet, but it'd be really nice to have a neat umbrella term for a collection of ants that can meaningfully be described together.  I mean, should I just call them all carpenter ants and that's "accurate" enough for literature purposes?

 

Update: Digging into the finer points of academic writing, I'm reminded of the Latin phrase sensu lato, meaning "in the broad sense."  It's used, usually as the abbreviation s.l., to refer to a group of similar species by one representative species, such as referring to all black carpenter ant relatives by saying "Camponotus pennsylvanicus s.l." where you're then free to build up your own group by citing examples later in whatever you're writing.

Edited by CampoKing, December 10 2018 - 1:31 PM.

[gcsnelling]

 

Meager is as it should be, common names are ridiculous and should not be used. "  Camponotus fragilis - The Fra-gee-lay carpenter ant AKA the Italian carpenter ant. Say what? "The Italian carpenter for a North American desert species". That is absurd. Abbreviations such as "Camponotus" and Pogonomyrmex are equally stupid and should never be used.

Semi related, mostly due to my own curiosity. I was wondering if entomologists use four letter abbreviations for species names during their field work, similar to what I use on my data sheets as an ecologist with the gov. For example Pseudoroegneria spicata shortens to PSSP6.

 

 

 

Usually they use the genus name spelled out with a numerical identifier, so Pogonomyrmex sp. 1 etc. They may add locality as part of it as well.

[dspdrew]

I'm sure everyone has noticed by now, that this thread is a little confusing due to the auto correct, which seems to be working quite well.    It's been a long time since I've seen stupid abbreviations and most misspellings of species names on here.

[CampoKing]

Hey the amateurs need to have fun somewhere. 

[sirjordanncurtis]

I'm pretty sure C. vicinus isn't a desert ant lol.

[DaveJay]

" I mean, should I just call them all carpenter ants and that's "accurate" enough for literature purposes?"

Camponotus spp. says enough, they are known as "Sugar Ants" here in Australia and I would guess other countries might have different common names for Camponotus as a group, where do you stop? Camponotus spp. that's where, it's worldwide which is why we have Latin Names, they chose a "dead language" for a reason, it doesn't evolve and it doesn't change depending on locality. Only using common names in literature would only work if your sole audience is going to be people from your area. Here in Australia and I'm sure elsewhere common names can vary from state to state and even within a state making them useless in almost any literature, including online communities like forums and facebook groups, if you want the whole world to know which species you refer to then you need to use Latin, America is not the whole world despite what Americans seem to think, but what would you expect from a country that spells words in the English language wrong then claims that they are right and English people are spelling things wrong! Laughable!

[Serafine]

The names are in Latin because during the middle ages and the renaissance era this was in fact the "global" language educated people spoke - english wasn't always the go-to solution (if it weren't for Latin the obvious go-to solution throughout most of Europe's history would have been either French or German).

Pretty much everyone who studied at a university or a theological institute was able to understand and speak Latin back then no matter where they came from or where they lived, so it was a pretty obvious thing to make the scientific names of all animals in this common global language.

There's even some scientists from the early 1900s that still wrote their species descriptions in Latin (which is quite horrible for modern taxonomists as barely anyone today can actually understand Latin to a degree where they're able to read those things).

 

Astronomy (another branch of modern science that has it's origins in the same historical time period) has a similar thing going on with naming places/landmarks on other planets and their moons, that's where names like 'Valis marinaris' (= the Valley of the Mariner space craft, a NASA space probe that examined Mars in 1964) and 'Olympus Mons' (= Mount Olymp, the largest volcano in the solar system, it's as wide as Arizona and almost three times the height of Mount Everest) come from.

Edited by Serafine, December 12 2018 - 12:29 AM.

[Serafine]

Here's a nice short lesson in British royal history by a famous British world of warships streamer where he makes fun of the nationality of famous British royals.

Jump to 2:30 for the interesting part.

 

Edited by Serafine, December 12 2018 - 10:02 AM.

[Guy_Fieri]

I think it is best to stick to scientific names, people could get confused if we us common names. But on the bright side, I just figured out that camponotus vicinus lives near my area according to Antwiki.

[nurbs]

no

 

 

Camponotus vicinus – the Desert carpenter ant

\

[CallMeCraven]

Technically scientific names can be latin or greek, but serafine is roughly right that during the 18th century Latin and greek were considered the languages of science; Linnaeus continued the tradition in his published works, which are considered the starting point for today's binomial system.