Talk:ruda

Discussion concerning the specific epithet ruda

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Megachile ruda and Stenodynerus rudus

Hello, Mr During. Do you think these two species of hymenoptera share an epithet? They certainly look like it (unless Stenodynerus rudus uses Latin rūdus [“lump, tile, débris, rubble”] as a noun in apposition), but I didn't find any other species with the epithet rudus, ruda, *rudum on Wikipedia, so I'm not sure an entry for the epithet is justified. Is there a common meaning shared by these species' epithet(s)? Are there other species that use this epithet? TIA for your expertise. 0DF (talk) 14:43, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I try to resolve this kind of question at Catalogue of Life advanced search.

S. rudus, named ~1949, by prominent US entomologist Richard M. Bohart, is apparently a synonym of Rhynchalastor rudus.

341 accepted species have rudis as epithet, 6 have ruda, 2 have rudus, 0 have rudum. One should not assume that the names are correct as Latin. I don't see ruda or rudus in Gaffiot, except rudus as a variant(?) of raudus (apparently often referring to something of copper) in Gaffiot (Cassel's has the same). Lewis and Short at Perseus seems to be down. Also, there are lots of epithets with the root ruder-, ie, that of rudus ("lump, etc").

The impression I've gotten is that hymenoperists often follow their own rules, so perhaps one or more of them invented an epithet. Five of the six CoL species that have ruda as epithet are in Hymenoptera, named since 1970. It is conceivable that these five were named based on the assumed correctness of the ~1949 naming. (One is a virus, which is not likely to be of help.)

The other instance of rudus is for a fungus (Rhizopogon rudus).

@User:Chuck Entz may be able to help further with more research, conclusions from the evidence so far, or advice on when to cut one's losses. DCDuring (talk) 19:53, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the research, especially for pointing me to the epithet's first use. I tracked down R.M. Bohart's protologue for Stenodynerus rudus; unfortunately, he doesn't explain his choice of epithet. Can you infer an intended meaning from that description? 0DF (talk) 20:32, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Apparently, not everyone agrees on the synonymy of Stenodynerus and Rhynchalastor. I've created an entry for the latter, including the names of all of its hyponymous species which Wikipedia lists (Wikispecies currently has no page for the genus). 0DF (talk) 21:01, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm guessing it has to do with raudus because of the copper connection. The coloring description has lots of red and brown, but to me the big hint is that it is being contrasted with S. kennecottianus (Cf. Kennecott Copper). Both species are described from Arizona where the Ray mine (now owned by ASARCO) is and another Kennecott mine (Safford) is/was.

Wikispecies is very incomplete. DCDuring (talk) 21:45, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah-ha! I see! I'll track down the other species' protologues to see whether they also feature redness, brownness, and/or copperiness in their descriptions. Could you list the species that use ruda, please? Also, I couldn't find Rhizopogon rudus mentioned anywhere in the BHL. Any idea why that might be? 0DF (talk) 21:59, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

"copperiness" can mean "Arizonity".

See Rhizopogon rudus at MycoBank.

The big lesson here is that this species is not even close to being worth the work. It is not an accident that there are no links from mainspace to this name. I have no idea what would motivate someone to add it or look it up at Wiktionary. DCDuring (talk) 22:08, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Megachile ruda used to be called Creightonella ruda, by which name the species was first described by Jean Jules Pasteels. Sources differ as to whether Pasteels' description was published in 1965 or in 1970 (though most say the former); however, since Creightonella ruda doesn't occur in his 1970 work, I infer by process of elimination that it must occur in his 1965 work. Unfortunately, I have been unable to get access to his 1965 Révision des Megachilidae…de l’Afrique noire, so I haven't seen that species' protologue. I don't suppose you have access to it, do you?

I looked into the alleged synonymy of Stenodynerus and Rhynchalastor. From what I can make out, Stenodynerus is a subgenus (or, according to its 1863 protologue, a “division”) of the genus Odynerus. Rhynchalastor and Odynerus are distinct genera. I couldn't find any publication (not counting databases) that synonymises Stenodynerus and Rhynchalastor. The one that comes nearest is this one from 2010 (see pages 223–232 [129–138 in the PDF]): Carpenter, Gusenleitner, & Madl synonymise a number of species in Odynerus and Stenodynerus with species in Rhynchalastor, but the only generic synonym they cite is Stenodyneroides (as “Synonym: Stenodyneroides Giordani Soika 1940. new synonym” on page 223 [129]). The entry in the Zoological-Botanical Database (Vespoidea) 4.0 for Rhynchalastor rudus (Bohart, 1949) cites “Gusenleitner J., November 2011” as having subjected the species to “taxonomic scrutiny”, but, try as I might, I couldn't work out or track down whatever publication it is to which that citation refers. (That citation is itself questionable, since version 4.0 of that database is supposedly from October 2011.) I wouldn't be confident calling Stenodynerus rudus a synonym of Rhynchalastor rudus unless I saw a publication explicitly synonymising them. I suspect that Rhynchalastor rudus is not currently attestable as a term in use outside databases.

A. H. Smith makes this comment on genus Rhizopogon, subgenus Rhizopogon, section Amylopogon, stirps Arctostaphyli (which comprises the species Rhizopogon arctostaphyli, Rhizopogon milleri, Rhizopogon rudus, and Rhizopogon salebrosus): “All of these tend toward ochraceous to cinnamon colors in the mature peridium,” which fits with the red/brown theme. All the pictures I've seen of Rhizopogon specimina may without error be described as “lumps” (per Latin rūdus) or “rude masses” (per Latin raudus). So the rudus in Rhizopogon rudus makes perfect sense. Moreover, given the preponderance of colour-based epithets in the species of Rhizopogon (five compounds with brunneus (“brown”) and three with ōchrāceus (“ochre-coloured”), just for starters), it's perfectly understandable that Smith would resort to increasingly obscure epithets.

There is another species that uses the rudus epithet, namely Unio rudus, which is notable for having been first described by that name in 1859, which makes it the earliest-described species that uses that epithet (AFAIK). Note the part of the Latin description that reads “epidermide tenebroso-fuscâ” (“[with] epidermis dark brown”): there's another match for the red/brown theme. Furthermore, mussels are pretty lump-like, so rūdus (or raudus) is apt. Unio rudus is a synonym of Diplodon delodontus. I have a query arising from the entry for the latter and from the one for its genus, Diplodon: You may notice, amongst the synonyms for each of them, some names that specify a subgenus after a genus, in which case the subgenus is given parenthetically. I copied that style of presentation from MolluscaBase, but I was unsure about doing so, because I've never seen that style in use on Wiktionary (though that may not mean much, since I'd never seen entries for subgenera on Wiktionary until I created a few). Is that the correct way to indicate subgenera in multinominal taxonomic names on Wiktionary? If not, what is the correct way to indicate them, please? Also, re Special:Diff/80794282, I was under the impression that links in {{taxoninfl}} to genera that have entries should be generated with ordinary double-bracketting, and not with {{taxfmt}}; is that not the case?

Regarding motivation and the worthwhileness of work, I can only address with confidence the question of what would motivate someone to add an entry for Rhizopogon rudus. If I may stand for that someone, I'll say that I added it as part of my investigation into its unusual epithet, and my investigation into that epithet was initially motivated by curiosity, and that curiosity was sparked when I noticed the existence of Megachile ruda on Wikipedia, which I noticed when I was creating an English entry for the Ukrainian placename Ruda, which I was prompted to do because it was the only orange-linked constituent settlement of Zhvanets rural hromada, and I was prompted to create Zhvanets because it was one of two red-linked terms in the definitions of Sokil, which entry I was prompted to create by the mention of the village of Sokil in Ocheretyne settlement hromada, Pokrovsk Raion, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine in a video about the current war in the Ukraine, which I quoted in the entry for Sokil. That's probably not very interesting, but it should give you an idea of my motivation. (I'm also motivated to create an exemplar of a Translingual but not Latin specific epithet to use in the discussion in Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2024/July#Are taxonomic names Latin or Translingual?, since abdimii is not one, being merely the genitive of Latin Abdimius, which is attested, sort-of.) Perhaps the same curiosity about Rhizopogon rudus’ epithet might motivate someone to look it up here; I've noticed that etymological resources for these enquiries are not nearly as widely available online as are taxonomic resources. Either that, or Rhizopogon may be some mycologist's speciality, as it seems to have been for Alexander Hanchett Smith, Sanford Myron Zeller, and María Paz Martín, to name only three. Finally, is Rhizopogon rudus worth the work? Maybe not, but to answer that properly, I need some account of what you do consider worth the work. Since we all edit here for free, the work must be intrinsically motivating, so maybe it doesn't make sense to wonder whether any of it is worth the work, as long as we feel like doing it.

0DF (talk) 21:07, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

I am concerned that we do not seem to often get outside our own pursuit of bright shiny objects to strive to add what users might care about: taxa they see, eat, plant, admire, get diseases from, etc. It's a problem not limited to taxa. DCDuring (talk) 22:13, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Taxonomic definitions often lack a human-relevant definition because there isn't one. What is worse are those that could have one (importance to humans, where found, vernacular name, etc.), but don't. DCDuring (talk) 22:18, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

What motivates your editing? 0DF (talk) 07:07, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

To do what I can to make English Wiktionary the best online dictionary for humans ASAP: professional, more inclusive and more interesting than other dictionaries. DCDuring (talk) 17:48, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Since that goal requires the collaboration of others, I think you delay and militate against the achievement of that goal whenever you are unnecessarily negative toward and dismissive of the labours of other good-faith editors of this project. 0DF (talk) 09:46, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Only what is, IMO, counterproductive or inefficient, even when it is preferred by a majority of the active. DCDuring (talk) 14:31, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I disagree. If you had been successful in discouraging me from pursuing my current BSO that is this epithet, how long would it have taken you to get round to creating an entry for Pellicia which, being an admirable little butterfly with vernacular names, constitutes a taxon that you assume our human users might care about? 0DF (talk) 14:55, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

You, in particular, seem unlikely to be discouraged by my cranky reaction to being drawn down a rabbithole. DCDuring (talk) 14:59, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

That may be, but my general point that your curmudgeonliness works against your own stated goals still stands, and in my case it makes me less likely to show you deference regarding taxonomic entries, which I currently consider a domain in which to respect your preferences. 0DF (talk) 15:30, 24 July 2024 (UTC)