By Donna M. Recktenwalt
In a word, yes. The answer has nothing to do with elitism, and everything to do with precision.
Newcomers to the aquatic hobby often bewail the fact that we use latin names, but any time you move beyond the most basic beginner level in the hobby, you will find the technical (latin) names in use at club meetings and auctions, among dedicated hobbyists, by the wholesalers, and by the scientific community.
Before you begin to complain that species names are too long, too complex, and too difficult to pronounce (and some of them are real tongue-twisters), consider this: It is an inherent human behavior to “name” the things in our environment. If we all spoke the same language, this would be little problem. But my “big brown fish that lives in the shallows” might be called “toothy fish that lives in the mud” by my neighbor across the river. Same fish, different name. Multiply this by the number of languages and dialects in the geographic range of any given species, then by the number of different species that may inhabit a biotype, and you can begin to see the problem.
Carolus Linnaeus saw it too, back in 1758, and proposed a system of binomial nomenclature that remains in worldwide use today. By precisely identifying any discovered, described organism, Linnaeus’ taxonomic invention provided clarity to the literate/scientific community of his day. With refinements it does so still.
The first word of the two (or more) part scientific name indicates the genus to which an organism belongs, based upon a group of attributes commonly shared; the second part denotes the species, a group of individuals potentially capable of interbreeding. By using scientific names anyonebe he a lepidopterist, a gardener, an orchid keeper, or an aquaristknows exactly what animal or plant is being discussed, no matter the country they are in or the language they speak.
Scientific names utilize both Latin and Greek roots, since these languages were common to all learned men in the western world of Linnaeus’ time.
In many cases, the genus name is descriptive. Mustela, the genus for weasels, comes from the Latin mus and telos, meaning “a mouse like a spear.”
The second name may be descriptive; it may honor an individual by using a latinized version of a proper name; or it may reflect the namer’s sense of humor. Cynolebias nigripinnis derives from the Greek kyon (dog) lebias (small fish), niger (black) and pinna (fin). Numerousspecies are named after the Drs. Axelrod and Jubb (axelrodi or jubbi); and more recently there has been Agra vation, a ground beetle whimsically named by Terry Erwin of the Smithsonian.
In printed usage, the entire scientific name is usually shown in italics, with the first name capitalized and the second in lower case, as in Aphyosemion australe. When more than one reference is made to the same genus, the genus name is often abbreviated, thus A. australe.
But an angelfish is an angelfish, you argue; a platy is a platy, a guppy is a guppy- even though they may now come in a wide variety of named colors and patterns. Why isn’t a killifish just a killifish?
It’s a matter of genera.
All angelfish belong to the genus Pterophyllum, either scalare or altum; only devoted breeders need worry about the difference. Likewise platies are all Xiphophorus variatus, X. maculatus, or hybrids of both. Guppies are all Poecilia reticulata, whatever their color pattern or finnage.
Killikeepers and cichlid fanciers are dealing not with varieties of a single species, but with a number of related families (genera) of fish, each with numerous species.
To complicate the issue further, both killi- and cichlid fanciers may also append location and collection data to the scientific names. Thus killikeepers encounter such names as Aphyosemion striatum Lambarene, or Nothobranchius eggersi Rufiji River Camp TAN 95/7 (Red).
Although a long name seems confusing, the extra information exists for a reason. As Gary Elson has said, “There’s a lot in a name, even if the name seems inordinately long. … When I look at a killie I see beauty, but when I look at the name of a killie, I see a little bit of the history.”
In the case of N. eggersi, mentioned above, several collections of the species were made at different sites and at different times. Although appearing to be the same species, the fish may or may not be closely related; only further scientific study will determine that. The appended information codes allow breeders to maintain strains separately until such determinations are made.
If appended information consists of a single proper name (such as Lambarene or Ngabu), it usually refers to a collection site or village name.
Letter and number addenda are usually assigned by collectors in the field, and correlate with their maps and field notes. Thus we have the code shown above: Rufiji River Camp TAN 95/7 (Red). This indicates the collection site location (Rufiji River Camp), the country (TANzania), the year (1995), the number of the collection site (7), and the color type of the collected fish (Red). Other collection sites resulted in N. eggersi in the red form, a blue form, and some individuals of each.
Also included in the addenda is color variety information, or strains bred from an original species, for example A. australe Chocolate or Aplocheilus lineatus Gold.
Since the taxonomy of killifish is constantly evolving, it is of great importance to retain all of the collection and varietal information for a species. Species names, even family names, may change over time as scientists learn more about their interrelationships. In addition, some fish have been collected, described and named by more than one researcher. This results in the same species having several synonymous names, a confusion that is perpetuated by out of date publications, but clarified by subsequent research.
A number of articles have appeared in aquarium publications attempting to clarify the taxonomic groupings of the killifish family, among them “Fundulopanchax: An Overview,” by Gregory J. Niedzielski and David A. Franco, and “A Fundulopanchax timeline,” compiled by Brent D. Kelley. Both appeared in the Journal of the American Killifish Association (JAKA), September-December 1995, and provide a comprehensive overview of that family and how its naming has changed. Brian Watters’ compilation “The Status of Nothobranchius Species Populations in the HobbyPast and Present” on the AKA web page (http://www.aka.org) and in the Notho section of the Gallery provides a good perspective on the Nothos. Numerous other articles exist in both the commercial and the scientific literature.
There are also a number of books available that provide excellent, if not always completely up to date, information. Recommended are Roger Langton’s Wild Collections, which documents the recorded information about collections and explains the naming conventions; Killi-data ’96 by Jean Huber; Rivulins of the Old World, by Gordon Scheel; Killifish Master Index by Ken Lazara; and for a more general coverage of fish classification, William Eschmeyer’s Catalog of the Genera of Recent Fishes. Most of these volumes are available through specialty aquatic bookstores; many are available through the AKA.
— G.C.K.A. Newsletter, August 1997