The purpose of a paper describing a species is to justify that a group of creatures is a distinct and not already named species. This is a task of biology and research, the purpose is also to give the...
The idea that person who writes the description gets to "pick" the name is one of the few remaining incentives to keep people doing this work. If the names are confusing or mysterious they won't be used by the general public. They will be used in science, but don't we want this system to be popular?
I could imagine a different process for scientific names, one with open public forums to discuss what the ant is already called (often common names are too broad and used inconsistently)
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I could imagine a different process for scientific names, one with open public forums to discuss what the ant is already called (often common names are too broad and used inconsistently)
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