Warum Camponotus ligniperda jetzt C. ligniperdus heißt

Im amerikanischen Forum gab es im Mai 2010 eine Diskussion darum. http://antfarm.yuku.com/topic/9934/t/Springtime-Anting-in-Germany-Many-pictures.html

In post # 7 erläutert „Doctorant“ (Professor an einer amerikanischen Universität) die Begründung. Bisher haben wir das „ligniperda“ als Substantiv in Apposition zum Gattungsnamen betrachtet, „die Holzzerstörerin“. Seinen Ausführungen zufolge muss es aber als Adjektiv gesehen werden, das dann die zum männlichen „Camponotus“ passende männliche Endung „-us“ bekommen muss.

Im Bolton (1995) ist C. ligniperdus bereits in dieser Form zu finden. Auch der „Hymenoptera Name Server“ http://osuc.biosci.ohio-state.edu/hymDB/nomenclator.home_page sagt:

Valid name: Camponotus ligniperdus (Latreille).

Es ist also eigentlich keine plötzliche Umbenennung; die “richtige” Schreibweise wurde nur nicht allgemein bekannt bzw. akzeptiert!

Zitat von „Doctorant“:

I do not like to disagree with Dr. Seifert, as I have the utmost respect for him, but in this case, I believe he is in error. Let's see if I can clarify (hopefully not further confound) the situation of Camponotus ligniperdus, which is the correct form, as we will see below.

I went back and read Latreille's original description, which is written in alternating French and Latin -- French phrase first, then the Latin equivalent. This turns out to be helpful in discerning his intent in naming this ant. Latreille's French name for this ant is la Fourmi ronge bois and his Latin translation for it is Formica ligniperda. The literal translation of the French name is gnaw-wood ant. (For those of you who know German, this would be something like the following made-up word - "Nagholzameise".)

But, Latreille's Latin was occasionally not so good, and this is an example. "Perda is the 2nd person-singular imperative (command) form of the verb perdo (to destroy, gnaw, erode), so Formica ligniperda would be rather bad Latin for something like saying to the ant, "Destroy wood, Ant!" Thus, for our purposes, -perda does not exist in any usable declension or derivation of the verb perdo, but Latreille nonetheless uses it to render the meaning of the French verb form "ronge. It seems he was trying to making an adjective (adjectival phrase) by combining a verb plus an object noun, as is commonly done in French, and that he put an ending on this synthetic adjective to render it in grammatical agreement with Formica. Thus, ligniperda is adjectival, not substantive, in form, and had to change to ligniperdus when this ant later was moved over to Camponotus.

84.167.88.230 08:25, 26. Mai 2010 (UTC)