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Topic: Common names with 'or' in them

In R6, the preferred common name for Helicoverpa armigera is given as Scarce Bordered Straw or Old World Bollworm. Both names exist separately under 'other common names', so please could one of these be assigned to the preferred common name in preference to this? In the moths the same applies to Alucita hexadactyla which has preferred common name of Twenty-plume Moth or Many-plumed Moth and to Mythimna unipuncta. There may be others too.

I note there are other examples of the common name having an 'or' in them in other dictionaries (surely that's what synonyms are for?) though I'm not sure how many of these are the preferred common name in R6.

This is a very minor issue, but it certainly looks rather odd when these crop up when reporting. Something that could be tweaked in R6 in a future dictionary update?

Mark Pollitt
SWSEIC (formerly DGERC)

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Re: Common names with 'or' in them

This one seems to be OK actually because all of the "or" names that I have checked are already set to "S" (junior synonym) in the Nameserver so it should be possible to sort common names so that the better names are offered first :)

Chris Raper, Manager of the UK Species Inventory, Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity,
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD.  (tel: 020 7942 5894)
also Tachinid Recording Scheme (http://tachinidae.org.uk/)