Have ??s

[ringojcp]

Hello,

I'm fairly new to this board. I figure that since we all dive here, we occasionally come upon strange animal behaviors and just weird things down there. Anywho, I was just opening my service as a former curator and marine science consultant to help you guys answer questions you may come upon while diving or having pictures of "what the hell is that?" specimens. If I don't have the answer right off my head, I'm sure one of my buddies will.

Cheers and bubbles!

Thien

 

[marku]

Thien? Sounds---- Vietnamese?

Here's one for you: What makes a species a species? & what makes a subspecies?

 

[ringojcp]

yes, you're right im vietnamese
i guess i'll take a nab at this question, of course my answer is debatable and you can correct me if i am wrong because i didn't say that i will be right
a species is a group of "specimens" that has a similar genetic makeup and physical structure to where interbreeding is possible with succesful outcome, a subspecies is a "specimen" with slight variations away from the original species but not different enough in make-up to be considered a new or different species, breeding between subspecies can be successful, but through my own experience, their offspring may be sterile
ie. bred a dumeril's boa constrictor with a yellow anaconda and ended up calling it a boaconda, but the offspring did not successfully reproduce another is breeding a jungle carpet python and a chondro python better known as green tree python and ending up with this neat hybrid we snake heads call a carpondro, but it's offspring is yet to reproduce
anyways, python would be the species and the many different types with similar physical structures and genetic make would catagorize this worldy species into subspecies ( i lost myself on that one)

 

[ringojcp]

did i explain well enough, you know what it is know?

 

[marku]

What about "undescribed" species? I see some pics in books and mags with only the genus name. Are they just waiting for a name to be made up for that particular organism? Is there an international governing body for naming new species?

Are you in Vietnam? I had a roomie who now works for Vietnam's oceanography bureau...

 

[ringojcp]

what about an undescribed species? It is what it is. There could be many reasons to why a species is unnamed in a book. I'm not going to name them all, but here goes nothing:

A rarely found species discovered by the author and the author isn't sure if the species has yet to be discovered but physically similar enough to other species of certain genus (what?)
I wouldn't want to publish a falsely ided specimen, nor would i want to claim to have found a new species and was wrong at the same time i would want to share what i found. I guess.
About who gets the say so. No one, binomial nomenclature only works in societies that participates.
But species are named for what they are in the latin language and then placed into certain order according to their physical and genetics makeup.
No, I live in the USA born and raised