Dr Lyon in 1916 questions: “Who the hell put the ‘l’ in Ambystoma” - or words to that effect

Spotted Salamander, Ambystoma maculatum
Peter Paplanus from St. Louis, Missouri, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

When I wrote the recently article on the Michoacán Stream Salamander (Ambystoma rivulare), I remembered that readers of old books and papers, like Hans Gadow’s volume Amphibia and Reptiles in the Cambridge  Natural History Series first published in 1901, will be puzzled by the spelling of the generic name of mole salamanders, Amblystoma, rather than the one used today, Ambystoma.

In the last decades of the 19th century and the early part of 20th, Amblystoma was in general use for these salamanders of Canada, USA and Mexico, together with derivations like ‘amblystome’ as a common name. So why is the accepted name now Ambystoma?

It was Marcus Ward Lyon (1875-1942), medical man and mammalogist, who asked that question—with a certain degree of indignance— in a letter to Science in 1916:

Two letters were published in reply. The first, very long  and rambling, was from the etymologist Charles Payson Gurley Scott (1853-1936). He was pretty well convinced that Tschudi and/or the printer had made a slip of the pen (the lapsus calami) or a consistent typo since Amblystoma simply meant ‘blunt mouth’ and ‘Ambly’ was used in similar circumstances for other animals, the lizard Amblyrhyncus, for example. ‘Amby’ however had no meaning in the ancient languages. The second letter merely noted that another American author had used ‘Ambystoma’ as the correct form in 1909.

Leonhard Hess Stejneger (1851– 1943) had argued strongly that Tschudi's name should be used:

The scientific names of animals can be changed if there is evidence of a spelling mistake, however caused, in the original publication. One example is that of the American Alligator, originally named with the specific name ‘mississipiensis’ by Daudin in 1802 but later corrected to ‘mississippiensis’. However in the case of Ambystoma there was no evidence that Tschudi had suffered a lapsus calami and so the name used by Louis Agassiz (who must have also thought that Johann Jakob von Tschudi (1818–1889) had simply made an error) was replaced by the original, a case with so much Latin and Greek in play, of nunc pro tunc. Ambystoma was thus restored.

When Agassiz prepared his Nomenclator Zoologicus, a list of all names used in zoological genera  in 1842-1846 he was based in Europe. Both he and Tschudi were Swiss and I cannot help wondering if there was correspondence between the two along the lines of. ‘I say old chap I was just wondering if your name Ambystoma was the correct spelling for the name you intended?’ And if not, why not?

For my pennyworth, I would question why Tschudi would erect a genus meaning blunt-nosed for a  group  when European salamanders with which he would be familiar, Salamandra salamandra, for example, also have a blunt nose. Having seen Axolotls and Spotted Salamanders feeding on large earthworms I can see why stuffing the mouth might seem appropriate.

The world had other things on its mind in 1916 and well-known books, like Gadow’s were reprinted into the 1920s (with reprints appearing as late as 1968). Thus it is no surprise that, Amblystoma continued to be used well into the 20th century. Indeed I was surprised to see Amblystoma used by Malcolm Smith in his New Naturalist Series book, The British Amphibians & Reptiles, published in 1951. Perhaps those at the Natural Museum in London agreed with Agassiz and carried on regardless. Or perhaps that was a lapsus calami.

Lyon MW. 1916. Ambystoma not Amblystoma. Science. 43, 929-930.

Scott CPG. 1916. Amblystoma not Ambystoma. Science. 44, 309-311.

Stejneger L. 1907. Herpetology of Japan and Adjacent Territory. Bulletin of the United States National Museum 58, 24.