Paper published: A reinterpretation of Thiodina

I think of Linnaeus as the founder of bioinformatics, as he established 250 years ago an implicit database (publications about our classification) with a defined ontology (taxa, taxon ranks, hierarchy) and rules for application.  The rules help mediate disputes and maintain order. Among the modern rules are that names are attached to specially designated specimens, and if there is doubt, you go back to the “type” specimen to understand how to apply the name.  Thus, Abel Bustamante, Gustavo Ruiz and I found that the type specimens of the type species of the familiar American genus Thiodina didn’t look like what we had expected.  This meant that the name Thiodina applies to a rather different group of spiders than we had thought, and we have to start calling our familiar species by a different name — Colonus.  Annoying, but not disastrous, and it makes sense to respect the rules as long as it doesn’t hurt too much.  Our publication about this just came out.