How do researchers choose their study species? Some choices are based on ecological or economic importance, some on ease of study, some on tradition – but could the name of a species influence researcher decisions? We asked whether phytophagous arthropod species named after their host plants were more likely to be assayed for host-associated genetic differentiation (or ‘HAD’; the evolution of cryptic, genetically isolated host specialists within an apparently more generalist lineage). We chose 30 arthropod species (from a Google Scholar search) for which a HAD hypothesis has been tested. We traced the etymologies of species names in the 30 corresponding genera, and asked whether HAD tests were more frequent among species whose etymologies were based on host-plant names (e.g., Eurosta solidaginis, which attacks Solidago) vs. those with other etymologies (e.g., Eurosta fenestrata, from Latin fenestra, or window). Species with host-derived etymologies were more likely to feature in studies of HAD than those with other etymologies. We speculate that the etymology of a scientific name can draw a researcher’s attention to aspects of life-history and thus influence the direction of our scientific gaze.

To find phytophagous arthropod species for which the hypothesis of host-associated differentiation had been tested, we performed a Google Scholar search on December 19, 2019, for the terms “HAD insect phytophagous herbivorous host associated differentiation”. In Scholar, this returns papers including all those terms in title or body, but the search is not case-sensitive. We did not impose any date limits on the search, which returned about 25,900 results ordered by “relevance” (which reflects Google’s search algorithms). From this list, we chose the first 30 papers that met two simple criteria for inclusion. First, we retained only papers that tested, with genetic data, the HAD hypothesis for a phytophagous insect or mite using more than one host plant (we disregarded whether the paper’s results supported or refuted the hypothesis). Second, we retained only papers that indicated the species name of the HAD-tested species in the title or abstract. In addition, we removed the genus Euura from our list. Euura (Roininen et al. 1993) has complex and uncertain genus-level taxonomy (Liston et al 2017), making some of our subsequent data-gathering steps impossible. We replaced Euura with Nemorimyza since Nemorimyza posticata Meigen, 1830 (a leaf-mining agromyzid fly) was recently tested for HAD (Mlynarek and Heard 2018) but was not flagged in our search. Although “insect” was part of our search string, we did not exclude papers that executed HAD tests on other phytophagous arthropods (and one such species, the mite Tetranychus urticae, was included in our final list). The resulting 30 HAD-tested species define a set of 30 genera for which we compiled species names and their etymologies. For our 30 focal species, we recorded both the year of taxonomic description and the year of HAD testing.

We took our list of 30 focal HAD-tested species and compiled lists of all currently recognized species in each of their genera, using online resources and also by directly asking taxonomists with relevant expertise. There were 2,739 species distributed across the 30 genera.

We then determined the etymology of the specific epithets. Where possible, we based our determination on the original species descriptions. When these descriptions did not include etymologies, or when they could not be located, we inferred the etymology from the linguistic formation (Latin or other root or suffix) of the name. For example, we inferred that a name ending in -ensis refers to a place of origin or distribution, whether or not this was explicitly indicated in the species description. We classified etymologies into seven categories: host, behavior, habitat, morphology, place, person (eponymy), or other. The “other” category was assigned either when we could not determine a specific epithet’s etymology, or when the etymology didn’t fit any of the other six categories. We included in the “other” category two names based on host common names or cultural references: Aphis sumire, where “sumire” is a girls’ name meaning violet, and violet is the host; and Phylloxera kunugi, where “kunugi” is a Japanese common name for the oak species Quercus acutissima. We reasoned that although these etymologies are ultimately based on hosts, that connection would be inapparent to most of the global research community.