Talk:upsila

RFV discussion: June 2022–February 2024

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upsila

Translingual; has {{rfdef}} and a single scholarly cite as a specific epithet in ichnology. I could not find another at Google Scholar among the numerous hits for "upsila", not at the Catalog of Life. DCDuring (talk) 15:03, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

This was added over a decade ago by User:Doremítzwr, who was somewhat fixated on minor historical peculiarities and apparently quite ignorant of taxonomy. Given that at least one of the taxonomic codes mentions "an arbitrary sequence of letters" as one type of taxonomic name, we should be more selective of which specific epithets we create entries for. After all, there are literally millions of species, and in some disciplines taxonomists are desperately trying to come up with unique names for thousands and thousands of them.

I would propose that we don't include a specific epithet if it isn't used in a certain number of binomials, with possibly some kind of loophole for names that make their way into other terms. Perhaps also a few could be allowed for well known species, but I'm not sure how we would decide on application.

This reminds me of misspellings, where we disallow rare ones. A specific epithet used in only one species name would only be looked up by someone who already knew the species name- aside from etymology, there's basically nothing they could learn from an entry here. Chuck Entz (talk) 18:23, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Fine with me. The number 3 seems like one possibility and is not entirely arbitrary, echoing RfV as it does. There are probably some peculiar ones that might have some linguistic interest (humor, etymology etc.) that don't have three binomials in which they are used (eg humbugi), but I'd be willing to sacrifice them. DCDuring (talk) 01:36, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Such cases could be documented at the binomial (Ba humbugi is more interesting than just "humbugi" anyway). Chuck Entz (talk) 03:50, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

The etymology may be worth having. More relevant is being told whether it is an adjective, which is relevant for professionals when assigning to a new genus in accordance with the principle of the instability of binomial names. Unfortunately, we also list genitives as adjectives, which is rather unhelpful. Has policy in this matter been decided? Two offenders I found straight off were boisei and darwinii. --RichardW57m (talk) 09:17, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

We have etymology at upsila#English. DCDuring (talk) 19:32, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Elsewhere I find this ichnospecies referred to as Psilonichnus upsilon,^[1] also while referring to “Frey et al. 1984”, as in the quotation with P. upsila.^[2] The bibliographic reference is somewhat ambiguous; it could refer to [Frey, R. W. and Pemberton (1984), “Trace fossil facies models”, in Roger G. Walker (ed.), Facies Models], or – more likely in view of the et al. suggesting more than one co-author – [Robert W. Frey, H. Allen Curran and S. George Pemberton, “Tracemaking Activities of Crabs and Their Environmental Significance: The Ichnogenus Psilonichnus”, Journal of Paleontology vol. 58, no. 2, March 1984, pp. 333–350.^[3]] The latter uses P. upsilon, so the epithet upsila appears to belong to the ichnospecies Oopsadaisy, whose primary substrate is formed by reference works such as dictionaries.  --Lambiam 11:17, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

I think it is a memorospecies until we delete it. DCDuring (talk) 13:54, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Frey et al., or perhaps the genus, appears to be typified by ignorance of Greek and Latin. In one paragraph, I see P. tubiformis (m. or f.), P. upsila (f.), and P. lutimuratus (m.), though surely Psilonichnus is neuter! Shades of Tellus Tertius! --RichardW57m (talk) 09:59, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

• Hits at BHL are for Upsila (place) and the plural of upsilon ("hook") in a single 1852 journal. Nothing at the Catalog of Life or the Index of Organism Names for the epithet. DCDuring (talk) 17:28, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
• RfV failed DCDuring (talk) 20:03, 29 February 2024 (UTC)