The Fruit Fly Drosophila Gets a New Name 136
G3ckoG33k writes "The name of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster will change to Sophophora melangaster. The reason is that scientists have by now discovered some 2,000 species of the genus and it is becoming unmanageably large. Unfortunately, the 'type species' (the reference point of the genus), Drosophila funebris, is rather unrelated to the D. melanogaster, and ends up in a distant part of the relationship tree. However, geneticists have, according to Google Scholar, more than 300,000 scientific articles describing innumerable aspects of the species, and will have to learn the new name as well as remember the old. As expected, the name change has created an emotional (and practical) stir all over media. While name changes are frequent in science, as they describe new knowledge about relationships between species, these changes rarely hit economically relevant species, and when they do, people get upset."
Backwards compatibility (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's not Sophophora yet (Score:1, Funny)
Exactly. Read the article. Mod summary down.
Re:Backwards compatibility (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow humanity doesn't dump a core over a new word
It doesn't?
Where the hell have you been?
What about the fights over gender identifying words and political correctness? Gott im himmel, get out from under your rock. Core dump? Entire political movements have been centered around whether we should use certain euphemisms.
That chair has no legs, it has "limbs" - Victorian era
That's not a retard, that's a "special person" - Modern times.
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BMO
50% of the species I have memorized (Score:5, Funny)
"It was very difficult for the commissioners," says Ellinor Michel, the commission's executive secretary. "It was a question of celebrity, as everyone knows D. melanogaster."
That would certainly be awkward...if we lose Drosophila melanogaster, the only full binomial I will know from memory will be Homo sapiens. I'll have to memorize the name Caenorhabditis (of C. elegans fame) or something, and that will truly be a tragedy.
Lyrical summary (Score:5, Funny)
Sophophora was Drosophila
Now it's Sophophora, not Drosophila
Not been a long time gone, Drosophila
Now it's bug filled time on a moonlit night
Every fly that was Drosophila
Lives in Sophophora, not Drosophila
So if you had a fly in Drosophila
It'll be waiting in Sophophora
Even old pluto, was once a planet
Why they changed it I can't say
People didn't like it better that way
So take me back to Drosophila
No, you can't go back to Drosophila
Been a long time gone, Drosophila
Why did Drosophila get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Scientists
Sophophora (Sophophora)
Sophophora (Sophophora)
Even old pluto, was once a planet
Why they changed it I can't say
People didn't like it better that way
Sophophora was Drosophila
Now it's Sophophora, not Drosophila
Not been a long time gone, Drosophila
Why did Drosophila get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Scientists
So take me back to Drosophila
No, you can't go back to Drosophila
Been a long time gone, Drosophila
Why did Drosophila get the works?
That's nobody's business but the scientists
Sophophora
(with apologies to They Might Be Giants)
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Ryan Fenton
Re:Backwards compatibility (Score:4, Funny)
To follow up to myself, and to apply this to myself, please don't call me "a person of size"
I'm fat.
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BMO
Re:Lyrical summary (Score:5, Funny)
I think you need to do more than merely apologize to TMBG.
You need to buy them a new meter, because you bloody well broke it there.
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BMO
Re:Backwards compatibility (Score:1, Funny)
but Big Massive Object is okay?
Re:No surprise (Score:3, Funny)
Translation: "I was on the losing side of this debate, so I'm bitching about the process."
Are they (Score:1, Funny)
going to change the name of time flies too?
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Funny)
At least the popular name is staying the same. I'd hate it if they ruined my favorite entomological pun: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."
Re:Lyrical summary (Score:3, Funny)
BURMA SHAVE
I bet Pluto ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Not Sophophora melangaster (Score:1, Funny)
Maybe its because biology students are first exposed to it in their sophomore year at college.
Re:50% of the species I have memorized (Score:5, Funny)
3x + 5
There, you know two binomials again.
Re:No surprise (Score:3, Funny)
I can!
Any planet-like bodies that are Pluto-sized or larger are "Planets."
Re:No surprise (Score:4, Funny)
Good point. And since Jupiter's mass ratio to the Sun is close to what Earth's is to Jupiter, I think we should just call Jupiter "a really crappy star."
Or maybe for classifying celestial objects it's not the size of the body, it's the motion of the fundamental forces ;)
I was hoping for... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:No surprise (Score:3, Funny)
{sigh}
And "Informative"? Really?