Sensu

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This article is about the Latin term. For other uses, see Sensu (disambiguation).

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Sensu is a Latin word meaning "in the sense of". It is used in a number of fields
including biology, geology, linguistics, semiotics, and law. Commonly it refers to how strictly
or loosely an expression is used in describing any particular concept, but it also appears in
expressions that indicate the convention or context of the usage.

Contents

 1Common qualifiers
 2Qualifiers and contexts
 3Circumscription
 4Examples in practical taxonomy
 5See also
 6References
 7External links

Common qualifiers[edit]
Sensu is the ablative case of the noun sensus, here meaning "sense". It is often
accompanied by an adjective (in the same case). Three such phrases are:

 sensu stricto – "in the strict sense", abbreviation s.s.;[1]

 sensu lato – "in the broad sense", abbreviation s.l.;[2]
 sensu amplo – "in a relaxed, generous (or 'ample') sense", a similar meaning to sensu
lato.
Søren Kierkegaard uses the phrase sensu eminenti to mean "in the pre-eminent [or most
important or significant] sense".[3]
When appropriate, comparative and superlative adjectives may also be used to convey the
meaning of "more" or "most". Thus sensu stricto becomes sensu strictiore ("in the stricter
sense" or "more strictly speaking") and sensu strictissimo ("in the strictest sense" or "most
strictly speaking").

Variants of phrases using the word sensu

Base phrase Comparative Superlative Meanings

sensu stricto sensu strictiore sensu strictissimo in the strict/stricter/strictest sense

sensu lato sensu latiore sensu latissimo in the broad/broader/broadest sense

sensu amplo sensu ampliore sensu amplissimo in a relaxed/more relaxed/most relaxed sense

Current definitions of the plant kingdom (Plantae) offer a biological example of when such
phrases might be used. One definition of Plantae is that it consists of all green
plants (comprising green algae and land plants), all red algae and all glaucophyte algae. A
stricter definition excludes the red and glaucophyte algae; the group defined in this way
could be called Plantae sensu stricto. An even stricter definition excludes green algae,
leaving only land plants; the group defined in this way could be called Plantae sensu
strictissimo.[4]
Conversely, where convenient, some authors derive expressions such as "sensu non
strictissimo", meaning "not in the narrowest possible sense". [5]
A similar form is in use to indicate the sense of a particular context, such as
"Nonmonophyletic groups are ... nonnatural (sensu cladistics) in that..." [6] or "...computation
of a cladogram (sensu phenetics)..."[7]
Also the expression sensu auctorum (abbreviation: sensu auct.) is used to mean "in the
sense of certain authors", who can be designated or described. It normally refers to a
sense which is considered invalid and may be used in place of the author designation of a
taxon in such a case (for instance, "Tricholoma amethystinum sensu auct." is an erroneous
name for a mushroom which should really be "Lepista personata (Fr.) Cooke").[8]

Qualifiers and contexts[edit]

A related usage is in a concept-author citation ("sec. Smith", or "sensu Smith"), indicating
that the intended meaning is the one defined by that author. [7][9] (Here "sec." is an
abbreviation of "secundum", meaning "following" or "in accordance with".) Such an author
citation is different from the citation of the nomenclatural "author citation" or "authority
citation". In biological taxonomy the author citation following the name of a taxon simply
identifies the author who originally published the name and applied it to the type, the
specimen or specimens that one refers to in case of doubt about the definition of a species.
Given that an author (such as Linnaeus, for example) was the first to supply a definite type
specimen and to describe it, it is to be hoped that his description would stand the tests of
time and criticism, but even if it does not, then as far as practical the name that he had
assigned will apply. It still will apply in preference to any subsequent names or descriptions
that anyone proposes, whether his description was correct or not, and whether he had
correctly identified its biological affinities or not. This does not always happen of course; all
sorts of errors occur in practice. For example, a collector might scoop a netful of small fish
and describe them as a new species; it then might turn out that he had failed to notice that
there were several (possibly unrelated) species in the net. It then is not clear what he had
named, so his name can hardly be taken seriously, either s.s. or s.l.
After a species has been established in this manner, specialist taxonomists may work on
the subject and make certain types of changes in the light of new information. In modern
practice it is greatly preferred that the collector of the specimens immediately passes them
to specialists for naming; it is rarely possible for non-specialists to tell whether their
specimens are of new species or not, and in modern times not many publications or their
referees would accept an amateur description.
In any event, the person who finally classifies and describes a species has the task
of taxonomic circumscription. Circumscription means in essence that anyone competent
in the matter can tell which creatures are included in the species described, and which are
excluded. It is in this process of species description that the question of the sense arises,
because that is where the worker produces and argues his view of the proper
circumscription. Equally, or perhaps even more strongly, the arguments for deciding
questions concerning higher taxa such as families or orders, require very difficult
circumscription, where changing the sense applied could totally upset an entire scheme of
classification, either constructively or disastrously.
Note that the principles of circumscription apply in various ways in non-biological senses. In
biological taxonomy the usual assumption is that circumscription reflects the shared
ancestry perceived as most likely in the light of the currently available information; in
geology or legal contexts far wider and more arbitrary ranges of logical circumscription
commonly apply, not necessarily formally uniformly. However, the usage of expressions
incorporating sensu remains functionally similarly intelligible among the fields. In geology
for example, in which the concept of ancestry is looser and less pervasive than in biology,
one finds usages such as:

 "This ambiguity ... has led to a ... dual interpretation of the Kimmeridgian Stage; the
longer sensu anglico meaning, or the shorter sensu gallico meaning." Here the
"anglico" or English meaning referred to interpretations by English geologists, derived
from English materials and conditions, whereas "gallico" referred to interpretations by
French and German geologists, derived from continental materials and conditions.[10]
 "...genetic stratigraphic sequences sensu Galloway (1989)" meaning those sequences
so referred to by Galloway, much as in the biological usage in referring to the
terminology of particular authorities.[10]
 "The second progradational unit plus PAN-4 are correlatable to the Pontian sensu
stricto (sensu Sacchi 2001)."[11] Here the we have a meta-reference: the Pontian in the
sense that Sacchi had applied as it as sensu stricto.

Circumscription[edit]
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Readers unfamiliar with technical aspects of taxonomy might find it helpful first to think of
everyday examples of the principles. When dealing with groups and parts of groups
(subgroups) of different types of things, taxonomists sometimes wish to speak of the full set
under consideration, and sometimes just a subset, but almost always want to refer to some
particular part, to the exclusion of other elements; in issuing an instruction to poll the
opinions of twenty-one members of a village community, a competent pollster would not
accept the reactions of two heads of households, three infants, four dogs, five cats, six rats,
and a tramcar. That would be taking sensu lato beyond good sense.
Instead the instruction should specify which sense should apply, such as sensu
stricto (or strictiore):

 "...all the heads of households on the north side of the stream," or "...all the
children in hospital with mumps", or "...the men the district attorney questioned
this morning," or "Zachiariah Quenton Horton of 221b Baker Street".
or sensu lato (or latiore):

 "... five of the school football team", or "the first few friendly-looking people you
find in the street," or "...some of the people in the district."
The important thing is that in each example the instruction circumscribed the
appropriate subjects; that means that the interviewer could tell which people were
wanted and correspondingly, which were to be left out.
The circumscription could be in terms of very specific criteria:
(...of all the possible people, only those the DA questioned, and of those, only the
adult males, or one specific person only)

or the criterion could be very casual, even vague:

(...as many as you like of the people that looked friendly to you in the street, even if
it turns out that the appearance was misleading.)

However simple that may sound, it is fundamental both in formal science and in
everyday affairs. Circumscription amounts to the basis for telling things apart,
which in turn is the rational basis for all diagnoses, formal or informal.
In biological taxonomy, as the next section describes, the same principles apply,
but they deal in various ways with circumscribing living things according to any
relevant criterion. In modern biology the criterion usually has something to do with
which creature descended from which kind of ancestor, in which ways it changed in
the process, and by how much. However, in more general taxonomies, although
the principles of circumscription are fundamentally similar, the criteria could be
largely different in type as well as in detail.
In short, in every discipline the sense of circumscription in taxonomy must reflect
the nature of the subject matter.

Examples in practical taxonomy[edit]

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Sensu is used in the taxonomy of living creatures to specify

which circumscription of a given taxon is meant, where more than one
circumscription can be defined.
Examples:

 "The family Malvaceae s.s. is cladistically monophyletic."

This means more or less that the members of the entire family of plants going
under the name Malvaceae (strictly speaking), which comprises over 1000 species,
including the closest relatives of cotton and hibiscus, all descend from a shared
ancestor, specifically, that they, and no other extant plant taxa, share a
notional most recent common ancestor (MRCA).[12] If this is correct, that ancestor
might have been a single species of plant, or even possibly a single individual plant.
Conversely the assertion also means that the family includes all surviving species
descended from that ancestor. Other species of plants that some people might
(broadly speaking or s.l.) have included in the family would not have shared that
MRCA (or ipso facto they too would have been members of the family Malvaceae
s.s. In short, the circumscription s.s. includes all and only plants that have
descended from that particular ancestral stock.

 "In the broader APG circumscription the family Malvaceae s.l. includes
Malvaceae s.s. and also the
families Bombacaceae, Sterculiaceae and Tiliaceae."
Here the circumscription is broader, stripped of some of its constraints by
saying sensu lato; that is what speaking more broadly amounts to. Discarding such
constraints might be for historical reasons, for example when people usually speak
of the polyphyletictaxon because the members were long believed to form a "true"
taxon and the standard literature still refers to them together. Alternatively a taxon
might include members simply because they form a group that is convenient to
work with in practice. In the current example, by adding other groups of plants to
the family Malvaceae s.l., including those related to cacao, cola, durian, and jute,
the circumscription omits some of the criteria by which the new members previously
had been excluded.[12] Now it is no longer clear that all members of the
circumscription descended from that one ancestor. Consequently, we say that
Malvaceae s.l. form a polyphyletic group, one that does not share any single
ancestor that had no other descendants. Then their most recent common ancestor
could have lived perhaps tens of millions of years earlier than the most recent
common ancestor of the Malvaceae s.s. alone; also there may be other extant
species that are not included in the modern Malvaceae s.l..

 "The 'clearly non-monophyletic' series Cyrtostylis sensu A.S. George

has been virtually dismantled..."[13]
This remark specifies Alex George's particular description of that series. It is a
different kind of circumscription; it does not refer directly to the biological nature of
the common features of the plants, but to the fact that A.S. George referred to them
as a series. "Sensu A.S. George" means that A.S. George discussed
the Cyrtostylis in that series, and that members of that series are the ones under
discussion in the same sense—how A. S. George saw them; the current author
might or might not approve George's circumscription, but George's is the
circumscription currently under consideration.

See also[edit]
 Glossary of scientific naming

References[edit]
1. ^ "Definition of Term — sensu stricto". www.fishbase.org.
06/2017. FishBase. 2017. Retrieved 2017-08-31.
2. ^ "Definition of Term — sensu lato". www.fishbase.org.
06/2017. FishBase. 2017. Retrieved 2017-08-31.
3. ^ The Journals of Søreen Kierkegaard, edited by Alexander Dru,
Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1959, page 22
4. ^ Spichiger, R-E; Savolainen, Vincent V.; Figeat, Murielle:
Systematic Botany of Flowering Plants. Publisher: Science
Publishers 2004 ISBN 978-1-57808-373-2
5. ^ Villiger, Mark E. "Customary International Law and Treaties
(Developments in International Law, 7)" Publisher: Springer
1985 ISBN 978-90-247-2980-7
6. ^ Wheeler, Quentin & Blackwell, Meredith. Fungus-Insect
Relationships: Perspectives in Ecology and Evolution. Publisher:
Columbia Univ 1984 ISBN 978-0-231-05695-3
7. ^ Jump up to:a b Panchen, Alec L. "Classification, Evolution, and the
Nature of Biology" Publisher: Cambridge University Press
1992 ISBN 978-0-521-31578-4
8. ^ "Tricholoma amethystinum page". Species Fungorum. Royal
Botanic Gardens Kew. Retrieved 2018-09-23.
9. ^ Sinclair, Bradley J. The Systematics of New World Clinocera.
Publisher: National Research Council (Canada) Research Press
2008. ISBN 978-0-660-19800-2
10. ^ Jump up to:a b P. J. Brenchley (2006). The Geology of England and
Wales. Geological Society of London. pp. 331–. ISBN 978-1-86239-
200-7.
11. ^ Tom McCann (2008). The Geology of Central Europe: Mesozoic
and Cenozoic. Geological Society of London. pp. 1102–. ISBN 978-
1-86239-265-6.
12. ^ Jump up to:a b Judd, Walter S. & Manchester, Steven R. (1997).
"Circumscription of Malvaceae (Malvales) as determined by a
preliminary cladistic analysis". Brittonia. 49 (3): 384–
405. doi:10.2307/2807839. ISSN 0007-196X.
13. ^ Olde, Peter M. & Marriott, Neil R. (2002). "One new Banksia and
two new Grevillea species (Proteaceae: Grevilleoideae) from
Western Australia". Nuytsia. 15 (1): 85–99.