by Piter Kehoma Boll
Although I’m not much of a taxonomist, I really love taxonomy and the way it can be used to add some sort of literary art to biology. So here I am going to present a list of genera named after some Greek gods. I hope you enjoy it!
The genus of fish Zeus is named after the king of the Greek gods. The photo shows the species Zeus faber. Photo by Wikimedia user Kleines.Opossum.*
The genus of fungi Zeus is also named after the king of the Greek gods. The photo shows the species Zeus olympius. Photo by Rossen Aleksov.*
Named after the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon used to be a genus of ribbon worms (nemerteans), but this name is currently a synonym of Lineus. The photo shows a specimen of Lineus ruber, formerly known as Poseidon ruber. Photo by Eduardo Zattara.**
The name of the god of the underworld, Hades, was given to a genus of butterflies. Here you can see an individual of the species Hades noctula. Photo by Dan Wade.
The plant genus Hestia, with a single species, Hestia longifolia, was named after the Greek goddess of the hearth. Photo by Michael Lo.
The sea mouse genus Aphrodita was so named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, sex and beauty. The photo shows the species Aphrodita aculeata. Photo by Michael Maggs.*
The fish genus Hephaestus, including the species Hephaestus tulliensis seen above, is named after the Greek god of fire and forgery. Photo by Glynn Aland.
The greek goddess of wisdom, Athena, was honored in the owl genus Athene, which includes the borrowing owl Athene cunicularia seen above. Photo by flickr user travelwayoflife.***
Ares, named after the Greek god of war, is a genus of fossil radiolarians that includes the species Ares mexicoensis shown above. Photo extracted from Whalen & Carter, 2002.
Artemis, the greek Goddess of hunt, used to be the name of a genus of clams, but currently it is a synonym of Dosinia. The species seen above, Dosinia coerulea, used to be in the genus Artemis.
The Greek god of travelers and messenger of the gods, Hermes, was honored in a genus of sea snails. Currently, it is regarded as a subgenus of the genus Conus and includes the species Conus (Hermes) nussatella seen above. Photo by Nick Zantop.*
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*
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
**
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
***
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.
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