The Scientific Names of Plants and Animals

by Forrest M. Mims III

One of the columns in this newspaper series described how to cope with the annual spring invasion of bees and wasps. Included was a photo of a wasp guarding her nest.

I called this wasp a yellow jacket. Allen Rhodes, a frequent contributor to the "Gallery" section of The Citizen Scientist, sent an e-mail stating, “This is the common misnomer for any of the various species of the Polistes genus. True yellow jackets do build paper nests, but normally in a hollow cavity in a tree, house, or in the ground. Their shape is more like a honey bee with black and yellow coloration.”

Thanks to Allen for sending this correction. It brings to mind the hundreds of thousands of names that have been assigned to living organisms.

The assignment of names to bacteria, protozoa, fungi, plants and animals is called taxonomy. The tradition of naming living things made its biggest step in centuries in 1735 when the famous Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus developed an improved method for naming plants. His system used Latin, which meant that people around the world could use the same name to identify specific plants. Later he applied his method to animals.

An expanded version of the system developed by Linnaeus is still used today. In the most basic method (there are variations), living creatures are assigned, in order, to a kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species.

So how are you and I classified under this system? Human beings are assigned the string of Latin names Animalia Chordata Mammalia Primates Hominidae Homo sapiens.

Scientists often use only the genus and species when describing a living creature. So we can shorten our scientific name to Homo sapiens.

Plants and animals of the same species can produce offspring. Yet many plants and animals of the same species look very different.

Consider dogs. There are many varieties, but all are the same species. In fact, wolves and dogs are generally viewed as the same species, for they can breed and produce wolfdogs. This is a good example of how scientists are not quite sure how best to assign Latin names to some plants and animals.

There is much to explore in the naming of plants and animals. Considerable information about the topic is available online simply by searching on any of the major search engines.

Forrest M. Mims III and his science are featured online at www.forrestmims.org .

This feature was originally published in Forrest Mims's weekly science column in the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, Seguin, Texas. The column is written for a general audience.