If you write a paper about an insect that was named and sampled over 100 years ago with no other papers written since you should be able to petition for it to be renamed to better fit the well documented behavior described in your paper. There is no incentive to revisit insects and it drives me nuts how they all got tagged like pokémon and never thought about again.
People are running DNA and that is nice but it won’t tell me what ants are doing!
@futurebird allowing renaming of spices could increase interest in the sciences in general. Their exist an anecdote of some professor being asked if he would rather have a Nobel prize, or an element named after him. His answer was clear "every classroom has a periodic table". It would be nice if the name of some researchers could be spoken in reference to what they studied.
@ekg @futurebird
I would perhaps prefer to avoid the pressure to add or delete specific names according to prevailing political winds. That would be sure to come if you open the door to renaming things.
@jannem @futurebird that already exist. And the introduction of an independent naming board, tasked with keeping names relevant to the subject. Could solve many of those problems.
For example they could have a rule that names need to be relevant to the features of the spices. Or honors those that studied the species. Or is reflective of national myth.
Their exist a good reason to introduce a naming boars in general, especially to allow public comment.
