Explore the vast range of titles available.

Common names of species are important for communicating with the general public. In principle, these names should provide an accessible way to engage with and identify species. The common names of species have historically been labile without standard guidelines, even within a language. Currently, there is no systematic assessment of how often common names communicate identifiable and biologically relevant characteristics about species. This is a salient issue in ornithology, where common names are used more often than scientific names for species of birds in written and spoken English, even by professional researchers. To gain a better understanding of the types of terminology used in the English-language common names of bird species, a group of 85 professional ornithologists and non-professional contributors classified unique descriptors in the common names of all recognized species of birds. In the AvianLexiconAtlas database produced by this work, each species’ common name is assigned to one of ten categories associated with aspects of avian biology, ecology, or human culture. Across 10,906 species of birds, 89% have names describing the biology of the species, while the remaining 11% of species have names derived from human cultural references, human names, or local non-English languages. Species with common names based on features of avian biology are more likely to be related to each other or be from the same geographic region. The crowdsourced data collection also revealed that many common names contain specialized or historic terminology unknown to many of the data collectors, and we include these terms in a glossary and gazetteer alongside the dataset. The AvianLexiconAtlas can be used as a quantitative resource to assess the state of terminology in English-language common names of birds. Future research using the database can shed light on historical approaches to nomenclature and how people engage with species through their names.

Common names of species are important for communicating with the general public. In principle, these names should provide an accessible way to engage with and identify species. The common names of species have historically been labile without standard guidelines, even within a language. Currently, there is no systematic assessment of how often common names communicate identifiable and biologically relevant characteristics about species. This is a particular issue in ornithology, where common names are used more often than scientific names for species of birds in written and spoken English, even by professional researchers. To gain a better understanding of the types of terminology used in the common names of bird species and their frequency of use, we used a crowdsourcing approach and recruited 85 professional ornithologists and non-professional participants to classify unique descriptors in the English-language common names of all recognized bird species from around the world. Each species' common name was assigned to one of ten categories associated with aspects of avian biology, ecology, or human culture. Across 10,906 species of birds, 89% have names describing the biology of the species, while the remaining 11% of species have names derived from human cultural references or local non-English languages. Species with common names based on features of avian biology are more likely to be related to each other or be from the same geographic region. The crowdsourced data collection also revealed that many common names contained specialized or historic terminology unknown to many of the data collectors, and this was documented in a glossary and gazetteer alongside the dataset. As the first comprehensive assessment of the state of terminology in English-language common names of birds, the AvianLexiconAtlas database sheds light on historical approaches to nomenclature and provides insight into how the general public currently engages with species through their names.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.Footnotes* The title, abstract, introduction, and conclusion have been updated to present the new dataset, glossary, and gazetteer produced during this research as a research database, now called the AvianLexiconAtlas. Researchers from across academic fields can use the resources in this database to study the history of English-language bird names from a quantitative perspective. In the text we clarify the utility of this database as a resource, but have not changed any of the methods, analyses, figures, or supplemental files.* https://github.com/ajshultz/AvianLexiconAtlas

A newly discovered ehrlichia species closely related to E. muris was identified as a cause of illness in three people in Wisconsin and one in Minnesota. The syndrome is described, and the likely vector identified. Ehrlichiosis and anaplasmosis are tickborne zoonoses caused by obligate intracellular gram-negative bacteria in the family Anaplasmataceae. 1 Symptoms typically include fever, myalgia, and headache, with rash in rare instances. Severe disease may be associated with gastrointestinal, renal, respiratory, and central nervous system involvement and, in rare cases, death. In the United States, ehrlichiosis in humans is caused primarily by infection with Ehrlichia chaffeensis, which infects monocytes, and less commonly by E. ewingii, which infects granulocytes. Anaplasma phagocytophilum is closely related to the ehrlichiae and causes human granulocytic anaplasmosis. 1 , 2 E. ewingii and E. chaffeensis are transmitted to humans by the bite . . .

An atypically large outbreak of Elizabethkingia anophelis infections occurred in Wisconsin. Here we show that it was caused by a single strain with thirteen characteristic genomic regions. Strikingly, the outbreak isolates show an accelerated evolutionary rate and an atypical mutational spectrum. Six phylogenetic sub-clusters with distinctive temporal and geographic dynamics are revealed, and their last common ancestor existed approximately one year before the first recognized human infection. Unlike other E. anophelis , the outbreak strain had a disrupted DNA repair mutY gene caused by insertion of an integrative and conjugative element. This genomic change probably contributed to the high evolutionary rate of the outbreak strain and may have increased its adaptability, as many mutations in protein-coding genes occurred during the outbreak. This unique discovery of an outbreak caused by a naturally occurring mutator bacterial pathogen provides a dramatic example of the potential impact of pathogen evolutionary dynamics on infectious disease epidemiology. Elizabethkingia anophelis is an emerging pathogen of high antimicrobial resistance. Perrin and colleagues sequenced isolates of a 2015/2016 E. anophelis outbreak in Wisconsin and found substantial genetic diversity, accelerated evolutionary rate and a disruptive mutation in the DNA repair gene mutY .