Species nomina corrections in the Cerambycidae (Insecta, Coleoptera), concerning specific epithets based on letters used to refer to characters of taxa

Abstract

This paper proposes to distinguish three Cases regarding the grammatical gender of species nomina which are composed of an isolated letter connected by a hyphen to a word. [Case 1] The first element is a Latin letter, the second element is another noun: the nomen is a noun in apposition, and its ending is unchanged. [Case 2] The first element is a Latin letter used to denote descriptively a character of the taxon, the second element determines the first and answers the question of its nature: the nomen is a noun in apposition, so its ending must not be changed to agree with the generic nomen but is always neuter, as the Latin letter. [Case 3] The first element is a Latin letter, the second element is a regular adjective which is specified by the first element: the nomen is an adjective, its ending must agree in gender with the generic nomen with which it is combined. Accordingly, 50 species nomina in the family Cerambycidae (Coleoptera) are analyzed and corrected when necessary.