Scientific Names
(more than just a geek's way to sound cool)
If you have had the chance to read any of the captions in our photo gallery, you may have noticed that some of the critters are listed with both a common name (the easiest to pronounce one) and a scientific name (the one that looks like a gladiator wrote it) and some only have a common name.
So why use both sometimes and not all the time?
Well the reasons why we use them at all are part of the answer to that question.
Scientific names are Latin descriptive words that literally describe characteristics of organisms. All living things are classified into increasingly more specific groups. Starting with kingdom and moving down to phylum, class, order, family, genus, and finally species. So in the example of the common named Yellow Tang; the full scientific name is
Kingdom=Animalia — Animal, animals, animaux
Phylum=Chordata — chordates, cordado, cordés
Subphylum=Vertebrata — vertebrado, vertebrates, vertebras
Superclass=Osteichthyes — bony fishes, osteíceto, peixe ósseo, poissons osseux
Class=Actinopterygii — poisson épineux, poissons à nageoires rayonnées, ray-finned fishes, spiny rayed fishes
Subclass=Neopterygii — neopterygians
Infraclass=Teleostei
Superorder=Acanthopterygii
Order=Perciformes — perch-like fishes
Suborder= Acanthuroidei — surgeonfishes
Family=Acanthuridae — cirujanos, poissons-chirurgiens, surgeonfishes, tangs
Genus=Zebrasoma (Swainson, 1839)
Species= Zebrasoma flavescens (Bennett, 1828) — yellow tang
Cited from ITIS.gov
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