Thursday 26 April 2012

(S)explained


Am I the only one that gets a bit of brain squeeze looking up seaweed life-cycles? As I am sure you do look up seaweed life cycles...or just generally any reproductive cycle of any creatures, plant or animal? Well I do... we are all different and that's what makes up special, right? Anyway, even if you don't look up life-cycles, you may well have come across these terms and had to stop to translate.

I do not say (and do not intend to say) monoclinous in every day conversation. As a result, I do not remember what it means. I have had a child and as a result of that lovely experience, I have lost half of my grey matter. My daughter is my memory bank and walking, talking lovely personal organiser. She tells me what I went upstairs for and why we're in town. I cannot be expected to remember what monoclinous means when there are days when I have clearly forgotten my own name.

I plan to work at providing some simplified terms for you but in the meantime - make your own suggestions and comments. The more absurd they are the more welcome they are to grace the comments box.

Here are some of the terms that I would like to see less of:

Gonochoristic

Heteromorphic

Isomorphic
Dioecious

Gametophyte 

Sporophyte

Monoclinous

Diclinous

Protogynous

Protandrous

Monoecious.  

Androecious 

Gynoecious 

Subdioecious 

Gynomonoecious

Andromonoecious

Subandroecious 

Subgynoecious

I could go on but I won't, I have a book to write and laborious text on life-cycles to translate.

Please do comment...

Ha!  I just did a spell check and guess what? None of the words are recognised - what a surprise!



5 comments:

  1. Oh.... lord.... I still have to stop and think about the difference between gastropods & amphipods. This one just hurts!

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  2. So I am not alone? Hurray! Thanks and apologies for the pain!

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  3. Anything with Hetro- Mono- Iso- are pretty much self explanatory and a few of the others cross in to other areas of biology easily enough Monoecious Gametophyte but a all the others just confuse the hell out of people.

    They do make things differentiate things, but the terms confuse the hell out of most people and probably put many students off.

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  4. They are indeed "self explanatory". Although this assumes that folk understand hetero- mono- and iso- in the first place. I studied, under duress, classics at school. I soon realised how valuable the classics are to help remember scientific nomenclature and terms.Perhaps it should be taught in undergraduate courses...

    It's just lots of crazy noise for the vast majority. This includes scientists who haven't been talking the lingo for some time.

    I'm all in for lovely terms like flagellating choanocytes but subandroecious is just plain rude! ;)

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  5. What about anisogamous? A village in Lithuania? Or oogamy? A Japanese dish or Scottish profanity?
    Cheers
    Nigel Moore/ostreology on Twitter

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