Smicromyrme and derivatives

Thomson (1870: 208) described Smicromyrme as a new genus to contain a single species, “ Smicromyrme rufipes (Latr.) ”, as one of only two species of Mutillidae found in Sweden (the other being Mutilla europaea Linnaeus, 1758). Unfortunately, there is no indication of the etymology or gender of the genus name in the original description (the only specific name associated with it is a noun in apposition which need not agree in gender with the genus name). For almost 50 years after its description, Smicromyrme was regarded as a synonym or subgenus of Mutilla Linnaeus, 1758, which is clearly feminine. It was only in the late 1910s that Smicromyrme became generally accepted as a genus in its own right, perhaps the major work to do so being Bischoff’s (1920 –1921) massive monograph of the African Mutillidae. For about 100 years the genus was considered to be feminine, but as part of their survey of genus-group names, Lelej & Brothers (2008) discovered that, according to their reasoning, the name should be considered as masculine. The change has apparently been generally accepted, including in the catalogue of mutillid names compiled by Pagliano et al. (2020).

Dalla Torre (1897) gave the etymology of Smicromyrme (regarded as a subgenus) as “ σμΙΚρός, parvus; μύρμηξ, formica”, so, conventionally transliterated and translated, “smikros, small; myrmex, ant”. But the name does not end in - myrmex. Accordingly, DJB searched in online Greek dictionaries for “μυρμε” (ignoring the accent on the υ) without success. The conclusion was thus that “myrme” was not a Greek word and definitely not Latin. The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (the Code, ICZN 1999) deals with the gender of genus-group names formed from words that are neither Latin nor Greek in Article 30.2. Since “myrme” is not a word in a modern European language with genders, the original author did not specify its gender, and it was not originally combined with any adjectival species-group names, it was concluded that Article 30.2.4 would apply: “If no gender was specified or indicated, the name is to be treated as masculine, except that, if the name ends in - a the gender is feminine, and if it ends in - um, - on, or - u the gender is neuter.”—hence the conclusion that Smicromyrme is masculine. It turns out that the subtleties of some Code articles and of the transliteration of ancient Greek escaped us, leading to this erroneous conclusion.

Article 30.1.2 specifies that “a genus-group name that is or ends in a Greek word transliterated into Latin without other changes [our emphasis] takes the gender given for that word in standard Greek dictionaries”.An online search for “μύρμη” (with the accent on the υ) revealed the existence of such a Greek word, a feminine noun (e.g., https:// www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=mu%2Frmh&la=greek), but its being very rare in the literature and without any definition (although Google Translate, presumably from modern Greek, states that it means “myrrh”). The Code does not refer to the etymology of Greek and Latin words as having any relevance, the mere existence of such words being the only criterion. Nevertheless, this discovery seemed unsatisfactory in explaining the use of the word for what was effectively considered a small ant.

Article 30.1.3 specifies that “a genus-group name that is a Greek word latinized with change of ending, or with a Latin or latinized suffix, takes the gender normally appropriate to the changed ending or the Latin suffix.” It provides several examples, all dealing with Latin endings derived from the Greek, none of them apparently relevant here, because “myrme” does not have a Latin ending. However, the wording of the Article does not preclude consideration of changes of ending in Greek that are then subsequently transliterated into Latin. In this case, “μύρμη” could be considered as derived from “μύρμηξ” with a changed ending, “-η” instead of “-ηξ”. It turns out that “-η” is a common ending used to create feminine nouns in Ancient Greek (e.g., https://en.wiktionary.org/ wiki/-%CE%B7#Ancient_Greek), so it is quite possible that Thomson (1870) feminized “myrmex” to “myrme”, perhaps to agree with the gender of the predominant mutillid genus, Mutilla. This appears to be one of two particular endings in Greek that are used “productively” – creating new words from existing words – to produce a feminine word, the other being the ending “-ις” (e.g. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-%CE%B9%CF%82#Ancient_Greek), which transliterates as “-is”, and is commonly used by taxonomists in Greek-based genus-rank names as a feminine ending. We consider it an unfortunate oversight that neither of these Greek endings is given as an example in the Code, even though both would appear to comply fully with the provisions of Article 30.1.3.

Consideration of both previous paragraphs leads to the inevitable conclusion that, under either Article 30.1.2 or 30.1.3 of the Code, the gender of Smicromyrme must be considered to be feminine. It is regrettable that we came to the wrong conclusion 17 years ago, leading to changes in spelling of many specific names, but hope that that disruption will not last any longer. It must be noted that the above conclusion applies equally to the other genus-group names ending in - myrme which have also erroneously been considered to be masculine, viz., Erimyrme Lelej, 1985, Nanomyrme Lelej, 1977b, Paramyrme Lelej, 1977a, and Taiwanomyrme Tsuneki, 1993. The names Andreimyrme Lelej, 1995b, Astomyrme Schwartz, 1984, Glossomyrme Suárez, 1979, Macromyrme Lelej, 1984, Mickelomyrme Lelej, 1995a, Odontomyrme Lelej, 1983, and Tsunekimyrme Lelej, 1995b are not affected because they were specified or indicated in their original descriptions to be feminine.