Colleague: ....we were diving and saw a cushion star! It was great. Do you know more about it?A lot of the public likes using common names and understandably so. Latin names can be intimidating to a public which no longer speaks Latin. But many people get REALLY worked up about common names. I've seen governments develop OFFICIAL common names in their national species lists!! I am NOT a big fan of common names. Why?
Me: I dunno. What's the scientific name?
Colleague: I don't know. The locals called it a cushion star and it was swollen.
Me: *sigh*....so let's start from the beginning, where was it from?......
Why do scientists use scientific names INSTEAD of common names?
- Scientific names are unique to a single species (dependent on animals vs. plants,etc.)
- Scientific names are FIXED. Once assigned, they will stay with the species until the end of Linnean taxonomy (or human society ends-whichever comes first)
For example, "Cushion Star" is one of the MOST commonly used common names for starfish in the WORLD. A search for "cushion star" using Google Image recovered several THOUSAND images.
Here's a few of them...
Cushion Star 1
Pteraster tesselatus (Family Pterasteridae) from the west coast of North America/Alaska. These also go by "Slime Stars"
Cushion Star 3
Patiriella regularis (Family Asterinidae) from New Zealand & Tasmania
|(from Invasive Species Council's website)|
Ceramaster granularis (Family Goniasteridae) from the North Atlantic
Good Grife! And don't get me started on the whole starfish-sea star-asteroid controversy! (although one day-I WILL get to it)