Masculine, Feminine, Neurtal, HUH?

[nigle]

Oi!

[I have posted this on another site but have found no one that has an answer. Perhaps the reef gods here or the Tang police have an answer. This question seems to have everyone stumped]

I have many fish identification books by Rudie H. Kuiter, one of which is BASSLETS, HAMLETS and their relatives.


On Page 6 is GENUS Symphysanodon The first word is Masculine

On page 85 is GENUS Tosana The first word is Feminine.

On page 125 is GENUS Trachypoma The first word in the description is Neutral.

Now the pictures that he has in the descriptions for the general family 'look' are not males and or females and or nonsexual, so I don't believe it has to do with that, but I haven't a clue to what he is talking about.

Can someone here explain? Has it to do with Masculine as being the 'ending' of the word in greek?, and that is it?

Anyhoo, what is with this?

Cheers!
nigle
!~!

 

[LeslieH]

Yes, masculine, feminine, and neutral refer to the gender of the generic names which are primarily greek or latin. In scientific nomenclature in general the endings of the species names have to agree with the gender of the genus names. One exception is when a species is named in honor of someone, then the ending of the name reflects the sex of the person. For example, a species named after me would be harrisae (female ending), if it was named for Harry Harris it would be spelled harrisi (male ending).

 

[nigle]

Oi!

Well thank you LeslieH, I was thinking it was something like that, but I thought it somewhat odd that R.K. actually did that in the books, I have never seen that in any other book about species, I guess this is the way R.K. is going to be 'special' in my mind when it comes to identification.

Cheers!
nigle
!~!