Scientists Share: Naming new species with Sidney Ruthven

How can challenging scientific naming conventions better reflect 60,000 plus years of Indigenous Knowledge about landscapes and medicine? Bachelor of Science student Sidney Ruthven shares her experience of discovering three new species of fungi, and the exciting decision she made next.

Sidney Ruthven is undertaking a genetics major in the University of Melbourne Bachelor of Science. Earlier this year, she took part in the AMGEN Scholars Program, where she was lucky enough to discover three new species of fungi.  

With that came an opportunity to do things a little differently. 

“It’s kind of boring going through the standard nomenclature, using the Latin or Greek bases,” explains Sidney. “People will use similar terms over and over again.

We were talking about how it might be interesting to give the fungi traditional names from the land where they came from, which I just think is amazing as an Indigenous student.

This innovation is an opportunity to better reflect “the oldest known knowledge about fungi” that exists in the 60,000 plus years of traditional knowledge and culture that Indigenous groups continue today.

And it’s not just this isolated instance of naming that Sidney is looking to change. Sidney hopes to see this contribute to the bigger picture of western sciences placing more value on Indigenous Knowledge, and paying more respect to the people who hold those knowledges.

“Within Indigenous Australia in particular, there’s so much diversity of culture and practice and knowledge that we have here. And it’s amazing, but you’ve got to respect people at the end of the day.

I feel science can be a little bit cold, in some instances. At the end of the day, it’s the people that should be taken into consideration when doing these experimental write-ups. And often that can be quite hard ,” Sidney tells us.

She explains further: “When you’re thinking about a particular gene sequence, and how exciting it might be to really get stuck into that and understand how that works , you forget to look up and think about the people around, and what the bigger picture is.

Sidney also emphasises the need for respect and acknow ledging where knowledge comes from in the first place. Reaching out and having the respect in the way that is done is just as important (as gaining and sharing knowledge), because we’re all people at the end of the day,she reminds us. 

On the horizon for Sidney is more communication with the local traditional groups from where her fungi were found. 

I would ideally want to give them traditional names from where they’re from. It kind of takes away meaning if I’m just going, ‘Okay, let’s just pick one language; that is not respectful,” she explains. “There’s so much diversity across Australia in language and people. Everyone is different, every group is  different.

Watch the whole interview below.


Connect with Sidney Ruthven on LinkedIn, and join the Science Alumni group.

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