Ornithologists are a very organized bunch. While the only names botanists and most zoologists other than ornithologists can agree on are latinized, "scientific" names, ornithologists have agreed on a "reasonably standardized set of English names" (as Worldbirdnames.org puts it). Botanists and zoologists could probably do that too, except that we'd first have to agree on a stable taxonomy. As biodiversity databases become more widespread, maybe the rest of us will find a way to agree on a (relatively) stable taxonomy.1
Until the rest of us get our act together, the ornithologists can sit back and poke fun at us. That and they can download HTML lists of 10,331 species of birds in the world, browse the currently accepted classification, or download Excel spreadsheets including species ranges at Worldbirdnames.org. They can even even create bird lists for different parts of the world using Avibase. It's almost enough to make me wish I were an ornithologist -- almost but not quite. Plants do too many interesting things for me to think about making my focus anything else.
Until the rest of us get our act together, the ornithologists can sit back and poke fun at us. That and they can download HTML lists of 10,331 species of birds in the world, browse the currently accepted classification, or download Excel spreadsheets including species ranges at Worldbirdnames.org. They can even even create bird lists for different parts of the world using Avibase. It's almost enough to make me wish I were an ornithologist -- almost but not quite. Plants do too many interesting things for me to think about making my focus anything else.
Hat tip: Wingnut
1To some extent this is happening already. A lot of us in North America refer to the USDA Plants database for plant names. It's becoming a de facto standard. And it even provides English names, though in many cases they're just translations of the latinized epithets.
1To some extent this is happening already. A lot of us in North America refer to the USDA Plants database for plant names. It's becoming a de facto standard. And it even provides English names, though in many cases they're just translations of the latinized epithets.
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