[PW] Ashtabula genus of jumping spiders

[Peter Macinnis]

Douglas Eric Anderson wrote:
> This one is for me:
> 
> In random surfing about the city where I live and work (Ashtabula, Ohio),
> I stumbled across a brief mention of "Ashtabula" as the name of a genus of
> Latin American jumping spiders.
> 
> I am curious as to how and why this genus got the name.

No answer, but a potentially useful hypothesis:

One of the problems with naming a genus is that you have to use a name 
which has not been used before for another animal.  The animal we 
Australians know as an echidna is in fact _Tachyglossus_ because 
_Echidna_ had already been used earlier for a completely different 
animal.  (Before that, it had been dubbed _Myrmecophaga_ "because it was 
an ant-eater", but the echidna is a monotreme, which is why it was 
dubbed _Echidna_.  Taxonomy is SUCH fun!)

To name something validly, you need to check the literature to make sure 
the name is unused, but one can slip, so more and more taxonomists are 
getting cunning.  I know of a newly raised genus in the Goodeniaceae 
which was called _Coopernookia_ -- one of them came from there, but the 
main thing is that Coopernook is a sleepy spotlet on the map near Taree 
(NSW, Australia), and the namer argued that NOBODY would have named 
anything after it.  He was right.

Generally, there is a convoluted explanation, but as far as I can 
recall, there is no requirement that the genus name have a logical 
connection to the genus, so it is possible that the discoverer came from 
there.  Wherever the species was first described, somewhere in the 
musty, fusty literature, there would be some indication of the 
justification.

It is now common to name fossils found in non-English-speaking areas by 
taking an apposite local word in an obscure local language.  This is 
Coopernook for the 21st century.

The other solution is to go for names like _Montypythonoides_, but most 
taxonomists are po-faced to an extreme, and look sniffily on such levity.

Alas.

-- 

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