On Tue, 9 Jul 1996 13:21:33 +0200,
Torkild Bakken writes:
>>It has been brought to my knowledge that a few months ago (February/March
>?) someone asked for information concerning the family names Nereidae
>versus Nereididae on Annelida net.
That first message came from mcamargo at aica.cem.ufpr.br on Sunday the 17th.
of December last year.
>I am very interested in the "problem" so if those who sent that previous
>request could get in contact with me, or anyone else could give me some
>information, I would be very grateful.
I sent the following reply to M.G. de Camargo, but not to the whole
discussion group:
"When the Americans first started putting Nereis in the Nereididae
rather than the Nereidae, I decided to check it out. I found that, in Greek
mythology, Nereis was one of the Nereides - the 50 sea-nymph daughters of
Nereus (a god of the sea) and his wife Doris.
The generic name Nereis is therefore obviously feminine, but not being
a Greek scholar I could not work out the termination of the grammatical
stem for use in forming derivatives (see page 223 of the 1985 edition of
the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature). I therefore spoke to
Mr. Melville (then Secretary to the ICZN), who assured me that under the
circumstances NEREIDIDAE is the correct spelling for the family name.
I hope this helps!"
-----------------------------------------------------------
Mr. A.I. Muir,
Marine Biological Services Division, Department of Zoology,
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, South Kensington,
LONDON SW7 5BD
UNITED KINGDOM
Tel: +44 (0) 171 938 9298
Fax: +44 (0) 171 938 9158
