Classification of spider etymologies

Data (in .xlsx and tab-delimited .csv format) associated with the publication:

Mammola et al., 2022. Taxonomic practice, creativity, and fashion: What's in a spider name? Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, in press

The dataset includes the classification of the etymologies of 48,464 spider species (all valid species and subspecies of spiders described between 1757 and May 2020; World Spider Catalog, 2020). More details can be found in Mammola et al. (2022).

We classified species etymologies into six broad categories: those referring to i) morphology, ii) ecology & behavior, iii) geography, iv) people, v) modern & past culture, and vii) other. Note that a single etymology may have multiple meanings and therefore belong to multiple categories. Within each category, we further broke down the meaning of species names into subcategories

a) Etymologies referring to “Morphology”

We used this category when an etymology referred to the size of the spider (subcategory: ‘size’), the shape of the body or some body part (subcategory: ‘shape’), or the general aesthetic/appearance of the species (subcategory: ‘color’). Whenever the name indicated the similarity to another species (usually names ending in -oides or beginning with the prefix sub-), we scored it as size = 1, shape = 1, and color = 1 unless a morphological feature was specified (e.g., "... similar in the shape of the cymbium").

b) Etymologies referring to “Ecology & Behavior”

We used this category when a species name referred to the ecology and habitat of the spider (subcategory: ‘ecology’) or some behavioral adaptation (subcategory: ‘behavior’).

c) Etymologies referring to “Geography”

We used this category when an etymology referred to the distribution of the species, including those names referring to the type locality.

d) Etymologies dedicated to “People”

We used this category when the etymology was dedicated to a scientist (subcategory: ‘scientists’) or other people (subcategory: ‘otherPeople’). Whenever the species was dedicated to the collector of the species, we always assigned it to ‘scientists’; this would include “amateur” collectors, who are being recognized for their contribution to the scientific process. We assigned the species to ‘otherPeople’ when the identity was not specified in the original description but it was possible to infer the species was dedicated to a person based on indirect evidence. For example, in old descriptions by Eugène Simon and contemporary authors, the species name was capitalized when referring to a person's name or surname. When a species name was dedicated to a fictional person, we classified it only in the category ‘Modern & Past Culture’.

e) Etymologies referring to “Modern & Past Culture”

We used this category when the etymology referred to contemporary culture (subcategory: ‘modernCulture’) or past culture (subcategory: ‘pastCulture’). These may include references to mythology, local tribes, pop culture, music bands, and so on. We applied the concept of modern or past culture relative to the species descriptor. For example, what we considered ‘modernCulture’ for Eugène Simon (1848–1924) would be ‘pastCulture’ for Norman Platnick (1951–2020).

f) “Other” etymologies

We used this category when the etymology didn’t fit any of the previous categories. These include names that are puns or arbitrary combinations of letters, that refer to an anecdote related to the collection of the species, and many others.

For each species, we also indicated the distribution at the continental level and whether we based our classification of the etymology on the original description (‘Original’; n = 22,416), whether we consulted the original description but we had to infer the etymology because it was not reported (‘Original + Inferred’, n = 1,018), or whether we inferred it without consulting the original description (‘Inferred’, n = 23,890). We left blank those etymologies we couldn’t infer (‘Original + Unknown’; n = 1,140) and excluded these observations from analyses.

All other column in the database are those found in the World Spider Catalog (https://wsc.nmbe.ch/).

Literature cited:

Mammola et al., 2022. Taxonomic practice, creativity, and fashion: What's in a spider name? Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society

World Spider Catalog. 2020. World Spider Catalog. Version 20.5. Natural History Museum Bern.