can you speak english for us dumb as a rock folks please? lol
Harry
Not sure which words you are missing, Harry, but on a one-time basis, Yen is saying that Stagmomantis tolteca (he courteously corrects the original spelling silently) or another name, given by the famous mantis sytematist (someone who classifies living things into descending ranks, from phylum to species according to their physical shape) Saussere, are either synonyms (another name for a given species, no longer considered valid, i.e. recognized by the scientific community), or subspecies, i.e. a group of individuals with clear differences from the main species which, however, can still breed with the main species, of our own Stagmomantis carolina as defined by the most recent modern, mantis systematist, Ehrmann in his comprehensive (all-covering) volume published in 2002.
Note how elegantly and concisely Yen was able to state his conclusion compared to my long- winded explanation. Note also, that many members who could easily understand this concise rendering , such as Yen, himself, (Chinese), Christian (German) and Superfreak (Russian) or me (Vulcan) all speak English as a second language. Technical language is designed to make understanding easier and to remove ambiguity, not to impress anyone or create an artificial barrier. If you are interested in getting to grips with the terminology (it would increase your understanding of the article that I sent you, for example), you might want to try a basic entomology text like Gullan and Cranston's
The Insects (get the 2nd edition, it's a lot cheaper!) and a good bio dictionary like Cambridge U.P.'s
A Dictionary of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics (do
not get
The Oxford Dictionary of Biology!). Good luck, and I hope that this helps.
