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Plasmodia - not a correct plural

Posted by fad1 on 23 Aug 2011 at 07:22 GMT

I winced when this article (and others) used the word Plasmodia to refer to multiple species of the genus "Plasmodium" collectively. This is wrong. Don't do it.

Although many Latin root words can be pluralized by changing the suffix from -ium to -ia (pericardium to pericardia for instance), you cannot do this with Latin genus names. For one thing, it changes the gender, which isn't allowed by the rules of the international code of nomenclature. If you wish to refer to multiple species of the genus "Plasmodium", then the correct way is to write "Plasmodium" spp. where spp. is the plural of species and is not italicised but does need a full stop (period) after the second ""p"".

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