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On hyphens and phylogeny.

Article Excerpt
The world of ornithology seems divided on the editorial question of whether we should hyphenate compound English names of groups of birds. The guidelines of the English Names Committee of the International Ornithological Congress (IOC) (Gill and Wright 2006) favor fewer hyphens and rekindled the debate, including a public recommitment by some to the taxonomic value of hyphenation (AOU Check-list Committee 2007). Most of the vigorous modem discussion of this issue has been informal on web site forums or in regional taxonomic discussions.

The controversial practice of hyphenating compound group names of birds traces back principally to a formal proposal by Kenneth Parkes (1978:326) that some names of this type, such as night-heron and whistling-duck, be spelled as two hyphenated and capitalized words. The sixth edition of the AOU Checklist (1983), its successors and its followers adopted this practice, largely without discussion, and continue to do so. In contrast, other major works such as the Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World (Dickinson 2003) opt for 'night heron', 'whistling duck', 'golden plover', 'pygmy tyrant', etc. Outside ornithology, herpetologists among others do not hyphenate compound group names of the related species, e.g., cricket frogs, chorus frogs, or narrow-mouthed toads (Crother 2008).

The use of hyphens in the written English language is difficult, widely misunderstood, and often violated (http://www.nyu.edu/classes/ copyXediting/Hyphens.html). Countering years of hyphenation creep where people added them with abandon, some being adopted, some not, mostly without careful thought or deliberative rigor, is the growing trend of scholars to drop inappropriate or unnecessary hyphens to improve communication in our written language (Magrath 2007).

HISTORY

At Alexander Wetmore's request on behalf of AOU's Committee on Classification and Nomenclature, Cheesman and Oehser (1937) formulated a set of rules to standardize spelling of English names of birds of North America. Among their enduring recommendations, they advocated the use of one word names rather than two as in Webster's dictionary at that time, i.e., meadowlark not meadow lark, bushtit not bush tit, etc. Second, they advocated conversion of hyphenated names into a single word without hyphens wherever possible, i.e., bobwhite not bob-white, Ovenbird (Seiurus auricapilla) not Oven-bird, oystercatcher not oyster-catcher. Further, they accepted use of the hyphen as a historical transition from two words to one, e.g., meadow lark to meadow-lark to meadowlark. In addition, they explicitly excluded use of hyphens for multiple adjectival modifiers for species such as Great Homed Owl...

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