In biological classification, a type genus is a representative genus, with regard to a biological family. The term and concept are used much more often and much more formally in zoology than in botany, and the definition is dependent on the nomenclatural Code that applies:
- In zoological nomenclature, a type genus is "The nominal genus that is the name-bearing type of a nominal family-group taxon."
- In botanical nomenclature, the phrase "type genus" is used, unofficially, as a term of convenience. In the ICN this phrase has no status. The code uses type specimens for ranks up to family, and all ranks must bear the name of the genus in which their types are placed, but the Code does not refer to the genus containing that type as a "Type genus". Names above the rank of family are not under any nomenclatural restriction according to the ICN, except where it comes to their endings.
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- Example: "Poa is the type genus of the family Poaceae" is another way of saying that the family name Poaceae is based on the generic name Poa.
Famous quotes containing the words type and/or genus:
“Histories of the world omitted China; if a Chinaman invented compass or movable type or gunpowder we promptly “forgot it” and named their European inventors. In short, we regarded China as a sort of different and quite inconsequential planet.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)