Page 4 - Park News – October, 2020 | The Blackburn Creeklands

Latin word for a kingfisher.
Why don’t we just use the Common Names? One problem with Common Names
is that they are not always unique and can vary from place to place. On the other hand,
a scientific name always refers to a specific species and not only also tells us something
about that species’ relationship with others, it may also describe the species somewhat.
For example, two of our duck species are the Pacific Black (Anas superciliosa) and
Chestnut Teal (Anas castanea). Decoding – Anas=duck, superciliosa refers to
“eyebrow” and castanea refers to “chestnut brown colour”.

At the back Anas superciliosa (eyebrow), in front Anas.castanea (chestnut brown coloured)

The third “duck” we see in the park, the Australian Wood Duck (Chenonetta jubata),
belongs to a different genus – telling us it is not as closely related as the first two ducks.
Chenonetta is from the Greek chen=goose and netta=duck and jubata=maned. Other
common names for this bird are maned duck or maned goose:

Chenonetta jubata – half way between a duck and a goose? The males are “maned” (or
mulletted?).

On the other side of the coin, sometimes different common names are used for the
same species – incorrectly suggesting they are different species. A good example is the
case of domestic dogs and Dingoes. Both are Canis familiaris. Leaving aside the tricky
question of hybrids, an intrinsic property of organisms of the same species is that they
can successfully interbreed – which dogs and dingoes can do.
Scientific names for plants, animals etc are regulated by professional codes – such as
the International Code of Nomenclature (ICN) for algae, fungi and plants.
Is there more to this than the Binomial Names? Yes, there are several higher
levels in this naming system separating bacteria, plants, animals, mammals and so forth
– drilling down to the bottom two levels belonging to a specific organism. A
classification system like this is called a taxonomy and has evolved quite a lot from
Linnaeus’ original system. More recently, DNA analyses have had a strong impact on
classifications.
There is sometimes a third level of name used for sub-species where variations occur
due to differences in evolution eg different colour forms or geographic races. For
example Eucalyptus viminalis, is the Manna Gum and E. viminalis subsp. pryoriana
is the Coastal Manna Gum – a smaller version found in Gippsland coastal areas. Notice

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