Thursday, February 19, 2009

GENUS & SPECIES NAMES

Capitalization
• Capitalized GENUS names and their abbreviated forms when they are accompanied by a species name.
• Always LOWERCASE the SPECIES name.
Eg: Haemophilus influenzae Escherichia coli
• LOWERCASE genus names used in plural & adjective forms and when used in the vernacular, for example, when they stand alone (w/o species name).
Eg: staphylococcus group B streptococcus
• LOWERCASE temrs formed with the suffixes –osis and –iosis indicate disease caused by a particular class of infectious agents or types of infection.
Eg: amebiasis dermatphytosis
Abbreviations
• Genus name may be abbreviated as a SINGLE letter w/o a period . A longer abbv may be used to avoid confusion.
Eg: S aureus or Staph aureus
• Do not abbreviate species name even if the genus name is abbreviated.
E.g. D: H flu T: H influenza
Italics
• Do not used italics for genus and species names.