I love this story on many levels, but in particular what it says about the “trained eye”.
New species of fungus identified via Twitter
81–90 of 101 posts
Re: New species of fungus identified via Twitter
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
they should have let Twitter name it too in a Twitter poll
Fungy McFungusface.
But that's not where this fungus attaches - something I'm sure the internet would've picked up on when deciding a name:
> The fungi are in a class of their own because they live on the outside of host organisms, and even on specific parts of bodies—in this case, on the reproductive organs of millipedes.
Re: New species of fungus identified via Twitter
#83> the new species has now been given its official name, 'troglomyces twitteri' Academia always seems so mature and serious from outside, nice to know there can be some lighthearted humor there too :) As an aside, do you guys know any other Latin animal names that may have an 'untraditional' origin?
OTOH, some good plants are as traditional as you can get.
When Marco Polo got to China, they had some plants & animals that had never been seen back in Europe.
When Western botanists followed over the next few centuries, they brought back specimens. Especially medicinal plants before there were drug companies anyway. It would seem there might be something worthwhile about a material which made it into a pharmacopiea over a period of millennia.
Eventually people started trying to give every different thing a different latin name, and when Linneaus got around to Chinese ginseng he dubbed it Panax Ginseng, simply preceding the Chinese name with panacea-derived "Panax" to classify the genus itself as the most highly regarded in the Far East for treating the widest variety of conditions. This must have also been considered relative to all the other plants that were known to the West for millennia themselves.
American ginseng, known to the natives for millennia on that continent, became Panax Quinquefolius.
Literally _plant with five leaves that can cure many things_.
Re: New species of fungus identified via Twitter
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's so funny about Turdus Maximus? I have a very great friend in Rome called Turdus Maximus.
Sounds/reads just like turd·-retard or dumb person, I assume.
It's a joke, sir.
(That and the "In Rome" comment are both references to a classic Monty Python bit from The Life of Brian (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U)
Re: New species of fungus identified via Twitter
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It has been noted that mention of a mutation in a sonic hedgehog gene might not be well received in a discussion of a serious disorder with a patient or their family. Imaging being told by a doctor that you have sonic the hedgehog disorder.
Mutations in this genes cause a birth defects called holoprosencephaly that is usually so severe you'd be telling the parents, not the patient :(
I think there was a small movement to have it renamed, but I don't know if it went anywhere or still exists.
Re: New species of fungus identified via Twitter
#86> the new species has now been given its official name, 'troglomyces twitteri' Academia always seems so mature and serious from outside, nice to know there can be some lighthearted humor there too :) As an aside, do you guys know any other Latin animal names that may have an 'untraditional' origin?
IIRC, the discoverer of the RING protein domain couldn't come up with a name so they called it Really Interesting New Gene (RING) which duos as a pun for a ring finger.
Re: New species of fungus identified via Twitter
#87> the new species has now been given its official name, 'troglomyces twitteri' Academia always seems so mature and serious from outside, nice to know there can be some lighthearted humor there too :) As an aside, do you guys know any other Latin animal names that may have an 'untraditional' origin?
This one's a protein: Pikachurin
Re: New species of fungus identified via Twitter
#88The title here needs to include "..." in the original article. For a moment, I thought this would be a satirical article, characterizing some group as "new species".
Ok, we've added fungi to the title above.
Re: New species of fungus identified via Twitter
#89> the new species has now been given its official name, 'troglomyces twitteri' Academia always seems so mature and serious from outside, nice to know there can be some lighthearted humor there too :) As an aside, do you guys know any other Latin animal names that may have an 'untraditional' origin?
[deleted]
Re: New species of fungus identified via Twitter
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s fairly normal for names of things few people are interested in such as insects and fungi. https://www.gadgette.com/2016/02/29/these-are-the-silliest-s... mentions, for example, Pieza pi and Spongiforma squarepantsii . Google easily gives you more examples, for example https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-worlds-str... , which explains the rules are not very strict: “The name must not be offensive, m…
No length limits, huh? Now, just gotta find a novel bug... edit: heh, you could code some nematode's dna sequence into its name.
Go through the wikipedia list of illegal numbers, encode them into latin letters...