North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 08:46 PM 09/03/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> One person said grounhogs are named Philohela minor and another said its 
> Marmota monax.  I'll repeat my question...Is there more than one animal 
> called a groundhog or woodchuck?.

One species, Marmota monax.

Scientific names of numerous species - animal, plant, and protists - are 
being changed, to a large degree, based on newer DNA homology 
comparisons.  Guess taxonomists gotta have something to do.
I wasn't aware of the groundhog/woodchuck's previous moniker - have really 
only been paying attention to them for the last 10 years or so.  Some 
biomedical researchers are looking at them as an animal model of human 
disease - they have a hepatitis virus that induces hepatic 
carcinoma(malignant tumors).
Taxonomic changes in the microbiological field have been rampant over the 
past 10-15 years.  Several of the commonly-encountered pathogens that I 
deal with on a regular basis have experience name changes several times:
Pasteurella haemolytica has become Mannheimia haemolytica
Corynebacterium pyogenes -->Actinomyces pyogenes -->Arcanobacterium pyogenes
Treponema hyodysenteriae-->Serpula hyodysenteriae-->Serpulina 
hyodysenteriae-->Brachyspira hyodysenteriae

Name changes in the plant world have been less common(to my knowledge) - 
are the plant taxonomists sleeping?  Several of the oak species have been 
'renamed', most not so much on the basis of DNA comparisons as by 
previously accepted misidentifications and acceptance of conventional names 
based on chronologic identification(someone had previously IDed and named a 
species, but a later name had gained more widespread usage).  Only other 
major plant name change that I can think of, off the top of my head, is the 
Japanese Pagodatree/Chinese Scholar Tree, Sophora japonica, which has 
recently been changed to Styphnolobia japonica.


Lucky Pittman
USDA Zone 6
Hopkinsville, KY