From Paul Keese
Amir Yassin wants the Drosophila melanogaster fruit fly to be renamed in order to “reflect biological reality” (19 June, p 24).
Somewhere there may exist an evolutionary path that conveniently follows the ideal of bifurcating speciation, but unfortunately this seems not to be the case here on Earth. Indeed, it has long been ignored by our unicellular companions, among whom horizontal gene transfer makes nonsense of our taxonomies.
Biological reality is interpretive. On the basis of genomic sequence data we could argue that humans and our distant cousins, the fruit flies, are each more closely related to viruses than to each other. Names are there for their utility, and evolutionary significance extends beyond DNA sequences.
Drosophila is not the only group to have confusing ancestry. If we stuck to definitions through ancestry alone, reptiles and birds would always be grouped together. Instead we have chosen to use names that give full recognition to the evolutionary breakthroughs of particular subgroups, such as birds’ feathers.
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As Kim van der Linde explains in her accompanying piece, there is an emotional attachment to a name. When my generation dies out, we can lay to rest archaic names such as the Graminae and Compositae.
From Shaun Dowman
The proposed renaming of Drosophila melanogaster demonstrates the need for an integrative DNA taxonomy. The standard binomial classification system should be supplemented with a unique genetic reference, derived from a sequenced portion of a species’ genome. If a species’ nomenclature changes, due to some new taxonomic insight, the genetic identifier will remain.
D. melanogaster will continue to be called Drosophila, at least informally. So familiar is this fly that I doubt it will be confused with any other species. In less illustrious cases, nomenclature shuffling will create confusion when referencing old literature. The addition of a genetic reference would ensure clarity in these cases.
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