WHAT?

[Richard J. Sexton]

I watched with interest as bionet.organisms.zebrafish was discussed and 
created, and ignored the calls of ``zebrafish is too ambiguous a name
if you mean specifically Brachydanio rerio''. 

Ater some preliminary testing and introductory messages here is the
first real posting in bionet.organisms.zebrafish:

In article <Ct93z0.AvC at ritz.mordor.com>,
Anthony Olszewski <aolsz at ritz.mordor.com> wrote:
>
>What sort of zebrafish is this about?

Selection of a name for a newsgroup needs to be well thought out
and grepping for ``fish'' by J Average User yields this bionet group. 

I suspect the above post will be only the first of many, and if it
were me I would have chosed something a little bit less ambiguous
and/or a little bit more obscure.

I seems ironic that bionet, which is where serious science is discussed
by serious scientists made the classic mistake of using  a common 
name. These are the people for whom Latin binomial taxa should come second
nature to avoid the problem just demonstrated.

Obligatory Brachydanio content: Why is B. rerio used for study not any
other member of the genus ?

-- 

Richard J. Sexton                         richard at panchax.gryphon.com