On New York University Week: What’s in a name?
Erin Morrison, clinical associate professor in liberal studies, looks at one colorful bird to find out.
Dr. Erin Morrison is a Clinical Associate Professor in Liberal Studies at New York University. She holds a B.A. in Biology from Amherst College and received her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona. Morrison is an evolutionary biologist who investigates the mechanisms of diversification of color in birds. She predominantly focuses on the evolution of the carotenoid metabolic pathways that produce one of the major classes of pigments in avian coloration. Her work has been published in the journals Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, Nature Communications, Evolution, The American Naturalist, Journal of Evolutionary Biology, PLoS One, BMC Evolutionary Biology, Biology Direct, Integrative and Comparative Biology, and Journal of Avian Biology. At New York University, Morrison teaches a wide range of courses that span from introductory biology to the Bridgerton TV show.
Linguistics Is For The Birds
The scarlet tanager is a species of bird that you would likely encounter in the spring and summer in the forests of eastern North America. Even if you have never heard of or seen this species before, what, if anything, does its name tell you about it? Let’s focus on the first word in the name, “scarlet”. This is a term used to describe a shade of the color red and, without having any other information, you have likely concluded that it is a red bird. It turns out, however, that this conclusion is only partially correct. While most of the feathers of adult male scarlet tanagers are indeed a brilliant shade of red, adult female scarlet tanagers are mostly a yellowish-green color without even a hint of scarlet.
It was this situation that sparked a discussion I had with my colleague, Dr. Allison Shultz. What is the goal of a species name? As biologists who study color in birds we were curious how often the common names of birds describe only the male color in species where males and females look distinct from each other. To quantify this, we built the AvianLexiconAtlas database, which includes categorical assignments for the types of descriptors used in the English-language common names of 10,906 recognized species of birds. Completed with the help of 75 data collectors from interdisciplinary backgrounds, the AvianLexiconAtlas is a resource to study categorical trends in the terminology humans currently use to name birds.
We found that a majority of all species of birds have common names based on their biology, and only 11% of species have names based on human cultural references, such as a person’s name. To answer our initial question, less than 2% of species are named after characteristics observed only in females, despite observable differences in color, pattern, and size between sexes in many species. What drives these trends in how humans name species? We hope that future researchers will use this database to help us answer this question!
Read More:
[PLOS] – AvianLexiconAtlas: A database of descriptive categories of English-language bird names around the world
Avian Lexicon Atlas
