Letters.

Gutsy question

Please explain a curious statement in "A more perfect union" (SN: 5/19/01, p. 314). The article paraphrases Jonas Sandstrom of Uppsala University in Sweden as suggesting that an "endosymbiont's isolation may be a one-way ticket to extinction. Once the bacterium loses genes ... it has no way of getting them back. It can't, therefore, evolve away from its special function and back toward an independent life."

This statement seems to contradict the basic theory of evolution itself, since it makes the absolute assertion that loss of genes must be an irreversible process. Why wouldn't it be possible for the endosymbiont's evolution to reverse its course and once again begin to multiply its genes?

Paul Schlueter III
Dallas, Pa.

The endosymbiont has no way of getting versions of its genes back because it is isolated from other bacteria. These bacteria aren't in the insect's gut, where they'd mix with other organisms. They're inside cells near the gut.

--J. Netting

The name game

As an insect taxonomist, I was amused by your article about whimsical scientific names, "A fly called Iyaiya" (SN: 5/26/01, p. 330) but disappointed that one of my favorites was not mentioned: the wasp Iaha ha.

Sandra Shanks
San Francisco, Calif.

Three observations on your article: 1) Linnaean names, at their best, tell you something about the creature that is named. Thus while "Phtheria relativitae" may be cute, it deprives the reader of potentially valuable, or at least interesting, insights. 2) If there isn't a Taxonomy 101 in which naturalists are taught not to mingle Greek and Latin stems in the same name (as in "Thanatogratus"), there certainly ought to be. 3) Some of the most interesting Linnaean names are those that end in ia and reveal a naturalist's name when the ia is stripped off--as Fuchsia, for Fuchs, Escherichia for Escherich, Yersinia for Yersin, and Poinsettia for Poinsett. Peeling ia endings off Linnaean names is a simple, harmless, and entertaining hobby for the idle scientific browser.

Tom Parsons
New York, N.Y.
Send communications to:
Editor, Science News
1719 N Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
or [e-mail]
All letters subject to editing.