Gender pronouns for symbionts

[Jerry Learn]

In article aa18464 at paris.ics.uci.edu, honig at binky.ICS.UCI.EDU (David Honig) writes:
>
>I was referring to a bit of lichen that I have been showing the
>world from the dashboard of my car.  I was going to use "he",
>since I wasn't sure of its gender, and then I realized that
>English has no pronoun rules when referring to necessarily-symbiotic
>organisms.  (Never mind that the algae is probably only sexual
>occasionally and that the fungus is probably hermephroditic.)
>
>So with access to all these spare brain-cycles on the net, I figured
>I'd ask.
>
Since I have (only) a few brain-cycles to spare, how about "it?"  

That was easy-- next?

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Jerry Learn                             

Dept. of Botany & Plant Sciences | learn at smaug.ucr.edu | LEARN at UCRVMS.BITNET  
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