Chapter 17, Problem 8A

Summary Introduction

To explain:

Sea-horse is not a good scientific name.

Introduction:

The Nomenclature is important because they allow people throughout the world to communicate unambiguously about species. Binomial nomenclature is used to identify any organism by its name worldwide as an organism may have many local names so it might be difficult for us to recognize any species or organism by its local name.

Explanation of Solution

Carolus Linnaeus proposed a system named “Binomial Nomenclature”.Binomial Nomenclature is the biological system of naming the organisms, in which the first word indicates a genus and second word indicates a specific epithet.

Rules of binomial Nomenclature:

• All the scientific names of organisms are usually Latin. Therefore, they are written in italics.
• Binomial name will consist of two words. The first word identifies the genus and the second word identifies the species.
• When the names are handwritten, they are underlined or italicized if typed. This is done to specify its Latin origin.
• The name of the genus starts with a capital letter and the name of the species starts with a small letter.
• The name of scientist or biologist must be written after specific epithet in abbreviated form.Example: Mangifera indica Linn.

As seahorse does not have generic and specific epithet and it does not follow the rules of binomial nomenclature, so it cannot be considered as good scientific name.