ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE 213 



3. Commensalism. Here there is benefit to the parasite, but no injury to the 

 host. An example of this kind would be furnished in the case of the Trichomonas 

 vaginalis which lives in the vaginal mucus, but so far as known, does no injury to 

 the host. 



If the Entamceba coli be nonpathogenic this would be another example. 



4. Nomenclature. When the thousands of different species, genera, 

 etc., of animals is considered, it will be readily perceived that, unless 

 some system existed for theii designation, indescribable confvsion 

 would prevail. To avoid this, the International Code, based on the 

 rules of Linnaeus (tenth edition of Systema naturae, 1758, is basis of 

 binary zoological nomenclature), requires Latin or Latinized names. 



In printed matter the zoological name should be in italics, that of the family 

 in Roman type. The name of the author of a specific name is written immediately 

 after the name without punctuation and may be followed by the year of publica- 

 tion set off by a comma, thus: Ascaris lumbricoides Linnaeus, 1758. Should the 

 name of the author appear in parentheses it indicates that he proposed the specific 

 name but placed the species in another genus than that in which it now appears, 

 and the name of the author responsible for placing the species in the present genus 

 may be written after the name of the original author of the species; for example, 

 Davainea madagascariensis (Davaine, 1869) Blanchard, 1891, tells us that Davaine 

 proposed the specific name madagascariensis in 1869 but placed it in some other 

 genus and that Blanchard in 1891 transferred it to the genus Davainea. There 

 are certain rules governing the naming of animals. Of these, the law of priority 

 provides that the oldest published name, under the code, of any genus or species 

 is its proper zoological name. The history of the naming of the organism of syphilis 

 illustrates this well. Schaudinn gave this organism in 1905 the name of Spiro- 

 chaeta pallida. Ehrenburg, in 1838, had used the name Spirochaeta for animals 

 of a different character, so that this designation of the genus was not permissible 

 under the code. Villemin, a little later, proposed the generic name Spironema. 

 This term, however, was found to have been used in 1864 by Meek for a genus of 

 molluscs and by Klebs in 1892 for a genus of flagellates. Consequently, being a 

 homonym, it was not available. 



(A generic name can be applied to only one animal genus and if a similar name 

 is subsequently given another genus it is a homonym and is to be rejected.) 



On December 2, 1905 Stiles and Pfender then proposed the name Microspiro- 

 nema, but as Schaudinn published on Oct. 26, 1905 the designation Treponema, 

 the name Treponema pallidum had to be accepted as the proper zoological name 

 for the organism of syphilis. 



Of unusual interest is the question of the name of the old-world hookworm. 

 Dubini, in 1843, named a nematode found by him in man Agchylostoma. By the 

 law of priority this spelling would have been the correct one had he not stated in 

 a footnote that the generic name was derived from two Greek words a-f-yvkoo and 

 orofia. Having indicated the origin of the name it became subject to the rules 

 for correct transliteration, which is Ancylostoma. 



