FAQ
A contribution of The Cephalopod Page
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Hi James, While reading The Cephalopod Page (TCP), I noticed that italics are sometimes used - usually with those freaky Latin words and sometimes for "octopus", sometimes not. Whereas squid, cuttlefish and the nautilus seem to miss out altogether. Would you mind explaining where italics are to be used and why, as viewed by you scientific lot (you don't seem that scary after all!). Many Thanks, Lachlan |
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| Italics are used in science when referring to the scientific name of an animal. Sometimes in older type-written papers, names were underlined, as italics were not available. The scientific name consists of two parts, the genus and the specific (species) name. Together, both parts uniquely identify an animal. For example, the species Octopus vulgaris is in the genus Octopus and has the species name vulgaris. You can tell these two parts of the name apart as the genus is always listed first and is capitalized and in italics. The species name follows and is lowercase and in italics. Octopus by itself, refers to any of 100 or so cephalopods in the species in the genus Octopus. While Octopus written by itself has meaning, vulgaris written by itself is meaningless. Other animals have "vulgaris" as part of their specific name; for example, Loligo vulgaris is a squid. In summary, every species has a unique two part name and both parts are needed to identify a particular species. Higher taxa, which give broader and broader groupings the higher you go, like kingdom, phylum, class, order and family are not placed in italics. Although they are often capitalized. Example: Octopus briareus is in the class Cephalopoda. O.K. now things get a little tricky as the genus is occasionally used as the common name for some groups. Sometimes you will see the words octopus and nautilus italicized and sometimes they are not. Here is what is going on. If you see "Octopus", you know that I'm specifically referring to members of the genus Octopus. However, if you see "octopus" I'm referring to their common name and am talking about all the octopuses including those not in the genus Octopus. For example, Bathypolypus arcticus is an octopus. Some species of Octopus are Octopus vulgaris, Octopus joubini and Octopus briareus. Scientists don't like to type out long Latin names anymore than you do. Thus they abbreviate scientific names. Bathypolypus arcticus becomes B. arcticus. The first letter of the genus, a period, a space and then the species name is the correct way a scientific name is abbreviated. However. The first time a species name appears or if there is any potential confusion, the full name should be written out. Dr. James Wood |