Thanks, Kelly, for the posting to Tweeters about your travails
over whether to capitalize or not to capitalize; that is the question.
I certainly applaud your choice to capitalize all formal English names
of species.

Did you have much trepidation about also capitalizing the informal
names of species?

You provided this example:
>"Most investigated Wolf sightings in the Okanogan Highlands were
> most likely to have been misidentified Coyotes or Dogs."

(My first instinct would be to capitalize, say, "Gray Wolf" or
"Red Wolf" but to leave "wolf" lower cased. In the same spirit,
I capitalize "American Robin" but leave "robin" lower cased.)

All of which makes me wonder--which flora and fauna, aside from birds,
are dubbed with formal English names by an authoritative body like the
AOU? And which ones get along with nicknames (from "an eke name"--an
also name)?

--cheers, Jim Lyles <jrlyles at usgs.gov>
Tacoma, WA <jrlyles at eskimo.com>