Bacteria and Viruses 47 



Recommendation 6b. Sect. 1. Naming of Taxa 



ANNOTATIONS 



Recommendation 6b (1) . Examples: Staphylococcus aureus, Clo- 

 stridium pasteurianum, Xanthomouas campestris. Bacillus rnsccjsus, 

 Kiirthia zopfii. 



Recommendatioyi 6b (2) . Notwithstanding pronunciation difficulties 

 and use of consonant combinations quite foreign to classic Latin, we 

 accept a name such as Cytophaga krzemieJiiewskae. Madam Krze- 

 mieniewska was a noted contributor to our knowledge of certain 

 groups of microorganisms, particularly the myxobacters. 



Some specific epithets derived from names of diseases are long 

 and cumbersome, as in the species names Bacillus pneumoenteritidis- 

 miirium (Bacillus of pneumoenteritis of mice) , Bacillus septicaemiae- 

 anserum-exudativae (Bacillus of exudative septicaemia of geese) , or 

 Leptospira icterohaemoglobinuriae (Leptospira of icterohaemoglobi- 

 nuria) . Two of these specific epithets have ten syllables and one has 

 fourteen. Many long names were not validly published, or are for 

 some other reason illegitimate. 



Recommendation 6b (3) . Rarely has this suggestion been ignored. 

 A name such as Micrococcus sphaericus is obviously not distinctively 

 descriptive of the species since presumably all species of this genus 

 have spherical cells. 



Recomynendation 6b (4) . This recommendation, taken from the 

 Botanical Code originally, has relatively little significance in bac- 

 teriology. One may not know that the Vineland of Azotobacter vine- 

 landii is in New Jersey. In some cases authors have chosen to use 

 the mediaeval or late Latin place names, making the modern meaning 

 obscure. 



Recojnmendation 6b (5) . Confusion of specific epithets in the same 

 genus due to similarity in spelling has not been common in bacteri- 

 ology. A hypothetical case may illustrate. There is a named bac- 

 terial species Pseudoynonas barkeri, likewise a genus of orchids 

 named Barkeria. Suppose a new species of a pseudomonad parasitic 

 upon Barkeria were named Pseudomonas barkeriae. There might 

 well be some confusion with two specific epithets in the same genus 

 so closely resembling each other as barkeri and barkeriae. Even 

 more difficult to differentiate in pronunciation would be the recog- 

 nized Pseudomonas woodsii and a hypothetical P. ivoodsiae named 

 from the fern genus Woodsia. 



