Despite the aviation mayhem, the International Botanical Congress started last night. For the Melbourne conference I was able to summarise and quote from tweets at the conference. For Shenzhen that wasn’t possible and, to my surprise, it might not make sense to try at Madrid either.
The ‘problem’ is that tweeting culture has evolved. There are plenty of ‘see my talk/poster tweets’ and plenty of tweets saying that people heard a talk, but so far few tweets about the talks themselves. Fortunately, Michela and Carlos are on site so I hope we will post some updates during this week or shortly after.
One decision that has caught the attention of the press is a change to “racist names”. Indigofera.yt on Threads points to two stories on Nature about the vote and the decision. There is some confusion about what has been agreed, but Sonia Molino has a thread on Twitter explaining what happened.
Originally, the proposal was to remove names with insulting or derogatory connotations retroactively. However, this was amended to apply only to names published after the start of next year. If you want to name a species after your favourite slur or felon, you need to be fast. After 2026 there will be a naming ethics committee.
An exception has been made for names derived from kafir, unbeliever. The term has evolved and been adopted as a slur against black Africans. Molina tweets: “[T]he consequence today is that it is very difficult to talk about such plants there, as it is a word that is even banned in some regions, creating a real communication problem.”
The solution has been to drop the first ‘c’ from many names, so that the names start with afr, in the hope this will be seen as a recognition of their African roots. The vote passed in a secret ballot 351-205. This change will take effect from the 28th of July, so Erythrina caffra will become Erythrina affra.
The decisions are getting plenty of attention on Twitter. It would be nice to say that it’s due to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature took a different decision, and there’s now a debate about weighing the importance of stability in taxonomy against its ability to function in society beyond North America and Europe.
It would be nice, but sadly incorrect.
Cover image: Erythrina affra flower by Tree Species / Wikimedia Commons.
