Published on 15 April 2026
My late night habit of reading open access papers published in Zootaxa continues to provide some interesting small papers. Last week, a paper of mine was published from this work:
The paper is, in short, a correction of a single name published in a new paper, so that the ending of the species name conforms to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Why is this important? It isn’t. It is in no way important. The Code is incredibly silly for mandating this kind of change. But what is important is that we follow the Code.
Codes like the ICZN are arcane and byzantine. They’re difficult to manage and difficult to follow. The more obscure rules, like with gender agreement, are annoying. But when we don’t follow those rules, the entire edifice of the Code is threatened, and we’re closer to not having a Code at all. That would be very difficult for science as a whole, as these names are currently the standard for talking about taxa.
I wrote this paper because I think that following the Code is important – and because I want to not-so-subtly shift the field towards making these sorts of changes unnecessary, by pointing out to scientists how silly the Code currently is. The more people have to wrestle with a poor Code, the more they are likely to push back and go through channels to ask their commissioners to change the Code.
It’s not the best strategy. A better strategy would be for me to talk directly to commissioners about changing the Code (which I’ve done), or to write articles about the changes directly (done that too), or to get myself elected to the commission (tried that). Given that those avenues are already being used or are exhausted, I’m doing what I can - by making sure the Code is upheld as it is. Further, I am also incentivized to publish papers. Academia is silly, too.
This paper is so short it doesn’t have an abstract. And, because I paid the $25 fee and because the paper is therefore under a CC-BY-NC license, I can reprint it here:
Lathrobium sapaense Tokareva & Bekchiev, 2025 was first described as Lathrobium sapaensis Tokareva & Bekchiev, 2025. The etymology states: “The specific epithet is an adjectival form derived from Sa Pa, the forest waterfall in mountainous Lao Cai Province, Vietnam, where nearby the species was discovered.” (Tokareva, Bekchiev and Nguyen 2025) The adjectival Latin ending -ensis has been added to the stem, sapa. This is the normal process for using this morpheme to latinize scientific names with non-Latinate etymologies. However, the suffix -ensis marks for the masculine and feminine gender; the neuter gender would be marked with the suffix -ense. The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN 1999; henceforth ‘the Code’) mandates in Articles 31 and 34 that adjectival species-group names must agree with the genus-group name with which they are combined. In this case, Lathrobium Gravenhorst, 1802 has neuter gender, so the species-group name must agree in gender with it.
The gender of Lathrobium can be ascertained through combination with other species-group names in the genus, such as Lathrobium longwangshanense Peng, Li & Zhao, 2012 or Lathrobium tarokoense Assing, 2010, or by analysis of the generic name according to Article 30 of the Code. Under Article 30.1.3, the name is neuter because it is a Greek word, most likely λάθρῃ ‘stealthy’, with a change of ending, and so should take the neuter gender as -um is normally neuter in Latin. Using a different interpretation, the word does not resemble a Greek word exactly (necessary under Article 26), but it is combined by Gravenhorst with other neuter names, such as in L. lineare or L. terminatum (Gravenhorst 1802). Under Article 30.2.3, this confers neuter gender on the generic name.
The available name is Lathrobium sapaense Tokareva & Bekchiev, 2025
You can read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5792.1.12
Published on 16 March 2026
Today I facilitated the Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington PGSA Special General Meeting, where we adopted a new constitution, elected some new executive committee members, and said thanks to those who were rolling off of the committee - including me.
I’ve been helping with the PGSA since I first landed, if at first in a minimal, arm’s length kind of way. I knew when I got here that it would be tempting to help with the PGSA, because I like organizing and helping students, but that it would be exactly the sort of job that would take a lot of my time, wouldn’t be paid work, and would get in the way of my thesis and my other organizing, such as with CURIOSS. Last October, after a year of attending events and meeting fellow postgrads, I realized at the AGM that there was a constitutional issue involving the amount of postgrads on the exec. So, I volunteered to run during the meeting, and ended up being elected.
For the last six months, I’ve been helping out where I could as an exec – helping to figure out strategy, advising on how to handle negotiations with VUWSA, the student association that includes undergrads and which was trying to take over all of PGSA’s activities, serving on various faculty boards where a postgrad voice from PGSA was missing, and organizing and attending some events. Today was the capstone of that, as I helped shepherd through the new constitution, something that was mandated by the Societies Act here. I helped with PythonNZ’s new constitution, too, as they went through the same process. The SGM today was a bit difficult to facilitate, as there was some excellent and very difficult questions to answer about how the new constitution is going. I think we managed. All of the motions passed.
I ran for the position of VP Academic/Research, but iff (if and only if) no one else ran. Thankfully, someone else did. So, for now, I find myself as of this afternoon without a position. I am now just a member of the PGSA again. I look forward to doing what I can on Te Here Tāura Rangahau Faculty of Graduate Research (FGR) board, and on Te Wāhanga a Manaia Faculty of Science and Engineering (FoSE) board, and others. But, from now, the exec meetings are optional – which is great, because it means I can focus on my thesis work. I’m happy about that.
I’m looking forward to being able to attend the coffee meetups, and just saying hi.
Published on 11 March 2026
After the last Wikicon Aotearoa in Ōtautahi Christchurch in May, 2025, I made the decision to change the license on all of my iNaturalist photos to enable easy reuse for Wikipedia and elsewhere. I am not a professional photographer; while I have sold art before, and while I have had showings of my work, I don’t prioritize returns on my photography. I am just happy to see it used.
Which is why I was excited to get a Google Alert a few weeks ago that my name had been published somewhere on the internet. In this case, I was pinged that I had been mentioned in an article called Rat-free forest offers rare boost for kōkako north of Rotorua. The article talks about how an indigenous Māori-led conservation project in the north of the North Island is doing exceptionally well at eradicating predators that imperil the native birds here in New Zealand. The focal species for this project is the Kōkako, a beautiful endemic that has a haunting, organ-like call. I’ve only heard it once, on Tiritiri Matangi near Auckland, where I managed to snap some photos of a Kōkako as it munched on some Taupata on the coast.
I didn’t explicitly allow RNZ to copy this image. They didn’t ask. They didn’t need to, as it is freely available under a CC-BY license on iNaturalist. I don’t profit on this work. That’s OK. I profit in other ways - my work was part of a movement of people trying to save this rare species, and through having access to free, good imagery, the journalists were able to make the project come alive to a wider audience. That’s profit enough.
Published on 04 March 2026
I arrived in Wellington with fresh eyes and a spring in my step, back in 2024. I almost immediately signed up and gave a talk at Kiwi Pycon 2025, where I also volunteered a bit and helped out setting things up. The community seemed amazing - a great group of pythonistas who worked on furthering the language and building a lasting, fun community here in Pōneke Wellington. Some of my friends from the before times were also at the conference - most notably, Chris Neuegebauer and Deb Nicholson, my former boss at the OSI and now the president of the Python Software Foundation.
When elections for PythonNZ occurred, I decided to run. Somehow, disturbingly, I was elected. So, from 2024 until today, I was on the PythonNZ committee. While I was there, we dealt with the normal rigamarole for these sorts of nonprofits - making a new constitution, dealing with finances, having long committee meetings where people talked over each other. It wasn’t always fun, but it was rewarding. I learned a lot.
We also planned and hosted Kiwi Pycon 2025, which was an entire conference in itself. Together with help from Chelsea Finnie and Devi Ganesan, we produced the first academic proceedings and academic track the conference had ever had - small, but a good start. I gave a talk. I got an arbovirus. I missed half the conference. What I saw was still great.
The time commitment balooned to a year and a half, due to changes in our constitution and how we decided to do the fiscal years going forward. So, today, at the AGM, I rolled off of the committee. I am now strangely noe a member of any nonprofit boards – wait, no, I am now on the EC for the PGSA. Good lord. Well, it’s one down, anyway.
I was grateful for the help and support I encountered being on this board, and for the friendship and care of those involved. We didn’t always agree - it’s a board - but it was well worth the effort.
During my tenure, I attended not a single Wellington meetup. I wish I could say I didn’t know about it, but the truth is that I live just far away that driving into Wellington is difficult, and because someone in my house is immunocompromised, we mask everywhere. Going into a meetup at night is never on my list of things I want to do. It’s difficult. I wish masking were easier, but it’s not for me.
PythonNZ isn’t just about the meetups - Kiwi Pycon is great, by itself. It’s also about the wider community and the Discord and so on. I felt honoured to have been voted in and to have been able to serve.
Now to take a much needed nap before I work on my thesis.
Published on 04 March 2026
TAXACOM is a mailing list that started some time in the forever ago, and ran until it was suddenly cut off at the end of 2025. It was one of the primary places for discussions of taxanomy and nomenclature as a listserve or public forum. I, together with Shinichi Nakahara and my mentor from the Royal Society Te Apārangi Neil Birrell, restarted it as a Google Group to allow continued discussion.
I’m hoping that we’ll end up having more good conversations in the years to come. I’m also hoping to institute the Contributor Covenant as a Code of Conduct, too.
Join us.