Andrew Grebneff wrote,
> Strictly speaking lady "bugs" ain't bugs... they's beetles. Best to call
'em ladybeetles...

> Bugs? This is a specific group of insects... stinkbugs, bedbugs, aphids,
scales, leafhoppers, cicadas, all with sucking mouthparts. Nothing else is a
bug.

> Misuse of the word really bugs me.

Aw, come on. It's hardly fair for scientists to take a common word like
'bug', give it a narrower definition, and then expect the common people to
use it 'just so'. Although, given a few centuries of steadily chipping away
at it, the process can work. 'Fish' used to include just about any animal
that was mobile and lived in the water, e.g., the 'starfish', now often
called 'seastars' or 'asteroids'. Yes, asteroids.

Latin names can be fun (one favorite is Abra cadabra; another,
Diplocraterion yoyo). But the common tongue has a verve all its own. I
remember biologists at the Allan Hancock Foundation referring to
holothurians as 'snot-thurians', a crude but apt description, and what they
called the big, highly extensible worms in the alcohol jars doesn't warrant
repetition here. But it was fun, and hey, the grad students did have to work
long days in an atmosphere laced with ethanol.

Cheers,
Andrew

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama