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The process of folk etymology usually took over, whereby a false meaning was extracted from a name based on its structure or sounds. Thus, for example, the toponym of Hellespont was explained by Greek poets as being named after Helle , daughter of Athamas , who drowned there as she crossed it with her brother Phrixus on a flying golden ram.
The following is a list of tautonyms: zoological names of species consisting of two identical words (the generic name and the specific name have the same spelling). Such names are allowed in zoology, but not in botany, where the two parts of the name of a species must differ (though differences as small as one letter are permitted, as in cumin, Cuminum cyminum).
Biotic homogenization is the process by which two or more spatially distributed ecological communities become increasingly similar over time. This process may be genetic, taxonomic, or functional, and it leads to a loss of beta (β) diversity. [1]
At the species level, subjective synonyms are common because of an unexpectedly large range of variation in a species, or simple ignorance about an earlier description, may lead a biologist to describe a newly discovered specimen as a new species. A common reason for objective synonyms at this level is the creation of a replacement name.
Nestedness: the degree to which species with few links have a sub-set of the links of other species, rather than a different set of links. In highly nested networks, guilds of species that share an ecological niche contain both generalists (species with many links) and specialists (species with few links, all shared with the generalists). [13]
A taxon above the rank of species has a scientific name in one part (a uninominal name). A species has a name typically composed of two parts (a binomial name or binomen): generic name + specific name; for example Canis lupus. Sometimes the name of a subgenus (in parentheses) can be intercalated between the genus name and the specific epithet ...
The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy. [26] [27] [20] By extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at the higher taxonomic ranks subgenus and above, [20] or simply in clades that include more than one taxon considered a species, expressed in terms of phylogenetic nomenclature. [28]
The etymology of the word "morphology" is from the Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ), meaning "form", and λόγος (lógos), meaning "word, study, research". [2] [3]While the concept of form in biology, opposed to function, dates back to Aristotle (see Aristotle's biology), the field of morphology was developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1790) and independently by the German anatomist ...