Growing With Science Blog

A few posts back I talked about Latin and Greek and scientific names for organisms. Today let’s look at some conventions used with insect common names.

A. Is it honey bees or honeybees?

When in graduate school, I learned a convention from Dr. Roger Morse for insect names (I have since learned the idea originated with Robert E. Snodgrass). The insect names that are taxonomically correct, such as honey bees are actually bees, should be written as two words. Insect names that are not accurate in identification are given as one word. For example, whiteflies are not really flies, but are relatives of aphids, and thus should be one word.

Quiz (answers at the bottom of this post):

Pick the correct common name according to this convention:

1. Butter fly or butterfly?

2. Crane fly or cranefly?

3. Dragon fly or dragonfly?

4. Lady bug or ladybug?

5. Leaf-footed bug or leaf-footedbug?

Photo from Wikimedia

6. Bumble bee or bumblebee?

The convention is only a rule of thumb, however, because there are definitely exceptions:

Photograph by Craig Pemberton. Wikimedia

Although this creature is really a wasp, it’s common name is velvet ant (2 words).

B. Mantis or mantid?

This distinction is more difficult. I had learned that either is correct, that is the two terms are interchangeable. There is, however, a growing convention that mantis only be used for the insects of the genus Mantis, and that all others be called mantids. (Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University).

I personally like to use mantids for the plural, it is just easier.

For a searchable list of common names for insects of North America, see the Entomological Society of America

Let me know if you have any questions about insect names or would like to learn more.

Answers:

1. butterfly

2. crane fly (two words)

3. dragonfly

4. ladybug (Note: if you use beetle, then it is two words,  lady beetle or ladybird beetle)

5. leaf-footed bug (2 words)

6. Bumble bee (2 words)

There are a lot of things going on this month.

Look for Space Day celebrations May 7-8, 2010. In the left sidebar is a set of middle grade lesson plans to download for free. The “Other Resources” is a .pdf file of a chat with four former astronauts. There are also games and links.

The NSTA (National Science Teacher’s Association) blog has a number of interesting posts.

The first is a short list of websites with information about the recent oil spill.

I was particularly interested in the post:  Are children getting enough direct experience with natural materials? The middle and high school teachers were bemoaning that most of the children in their classes had little exposure to real organisms.  For example, most of their students had never seen a real grasshopper! The teachers in the blog post blame the elementary teachers, but I think that is unfair. I recently was going to visit a second grade class room with live insects, but my visit was canceled because the classes were too busy with standardized testing.

Elementary teachers have an enormous amount of pressure to get their students through a battery of standardized tests. Their jobs may be at stake. But obviously this emphasis on testing has unforeseen consequences for the students’ future success, at least in science.

What do you think?

For more information on oil spills for children:

Did you guess which of the two beetles were lady beetles from Wednesday’s Bug of the Week?

If you guessed both, then you are a lady beetle pro!

The bottom photograph in Wednesday’s post is our common convergent lady beetle, Hippodamia convergens, the type of lady beetle often sold in stores.

Lady beetles come in a number of colors besides orange with black spots, however, including this black with rusty-colored spots.

This is a cutie called the ashy-gray lady beetle, Olla v-nigrum. Why is it called ashy-gray? Because the same species comes in another color morph that looks like this:

Yes, not only are these both lady beetles, they are also both the same species!

Have you seen any lady beetles this month?