Talk:Trinomial nomenclature

I am not sure that without an identification for a taxon a subspecies can be assumed. It looks wrong to me.. (GerardM)

It is all right - this is absolutely standard usage, at least where vertebrate animals are concerned. I don't know about plants or invertebrates, let alone protists etc, and it may be that subsp. needs to be specified for them. In animals, the lower subspecific taxa are rarely (never?) used. If you look in any bird book - or zoological learned journal -- you'll see trinomials done as genus species subspecies without qualification. seglea 22:43, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

When a species becomes geographically seperated, both populations may evolve and differ from the original species over time. I would think that crossbreeding prevents divergence but when this does not happen, the traits that ensure the best survival will become dominant. When circumstances differ in two areas both populations will evolve. This is why I would not speak about the "regional population" that evolves but rather about the species.. (GerardM)

I wonder why it is "better" to say Genus species var. subspecies. the totallity is the name of the plant. IPNI has a new way of putting this information on its website. The reason THEY have for using different styling is imho that they have much condensed information on their pages and this helps the readability of their information. GerardM 06:35, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This page needs some heavy editing - trinomial nomenclature really only applies to zoology / animals. With plants, there are several different levels of infraspecific rank, so you can have tetranomials (or even, though I've never come across one in use) pentanomials (e.g. Genus species subsp. subspecies var. variety f. forma) as well as trinomials (which is why the rank has to be stated); for this reason the term 'trinomial nomenclature' isn't used in botany. I've put a brief summary at Binomial nomenclature. - MPF 16:03, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

homo loco
I moved the following text from the page to here:


 * Such examples of the use of trimonial nomenclatures are few, although highly relevant to humans. There has been debate as to whether the human species should receive the trinomial homo loco sapiens or homo sapien sapiens. The former, indicating the language of the human species (loco deriving from the Latin "I speak") has only recently been explored. The nomenclature homo sapien sapiens is being more accepted, as it reflects the higher level of intelligence acquired by humans as a species.

The reference "such examples" is missing an antecedent, trinomens aren't very rare, there are no sources, nomenclature depends on priority not what name is "best", and, in any event, this would belong on a page like Homo (genus) rather than here even if it did belong in Wikipedia. Kingdon 17:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Good edit, Kingdon. Many of these nomenclature articles probably need read and edited for content and references, now that it's a bit safe to do so.  KP Botany 17:51, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
 * (If "homo loco" was a joke, sorry for the lack of a sense of humor, and do take it to ). Kingdon 22:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)