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Comment by datameta | Hacker News Reader

I can't avoid pointing out the glaring miscategorization of microbiota as insects in the title.

Surely you’ve heard disease causing agents referred to that way

Only in America, and it rubs me wrong each time. Regardless of my feelings on local dialect, this is the title of an article on scientific advancement. They shouldn't be taxonomically vague. It's misleading at best, clickbait at worst.

If you are going to be that picky then your original complaint was imprecise. Bug != insect. True bugs are hemiptera or possibly only heteroptera [1], bugs generally are any arthropods [2].

It's surely not useful word if you wanted to be precise. The word bug is taxonomically vague.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemiptera

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug

"Insects are the largest group within the arthropod phylum" [0]

So if colloquially any arthropod is a bug (which seems wrong to me) then any insect is a bug. To that end I can certainly agree that the word "bug" is a broad term and has different meanings contextually.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect

Me too, actually. There is a subset of the population that insists on misusing language, and the effect is that the meaning of words becomes diluted, confusing, leading to misunderstandings and horrendous flame wars. It's just senseless.

What I don't understand is how it is possible that bacteria could so rapidly evolve a microphone and radio transmitter. What evolutionary pressures could have caused that?

https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.p...

Yes, but it's not the word's primary meaning. Using it in a headline like that -- where it's the first thing the reader sees, rather than after context has been established -- is misleading.

Very rarely (I'd heard the term "stomach bug"), and I would expect that to be slang—used by people who don't know whether the disease-causing agent is a virus, a bacterium, or something else (likely people who aren't very clear on the distinction between a virus and a bacterium). Does anyone who studies bacteria call them "bugs"?

Edit: I tried googling "does anyone who studies bacteria call them bugs". The first relevant result is https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/bugs-within-u... , an article that contains: "You are full of bugs. No, not cockroaches and ants. These bugs are tiny, single-celled bacteria". The author is a "science journalist"... although, according to her resume, she does have a bachelor's degree in biology and studied something to do with an immune response gene, and worked on genetics and software for a few years. The second relevant result is https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/microbiome-survey... , whose author is also a "science journalist"... who majored in English and then went to a journalism school.

That's more than I expected to find, though still not examples of someone who actively studies bacteria referring to them as bugs.

Eh, my mother has always spoken of stomach bugs and she's always known they weren't caused by insects. Her father was a botanist and her mother a geologist, so she grew up in closed proximity to people who spent a lot of time talking about the natural science. Likewise she knows that insect bugs aren't "true bugs" and that jellyfish and starfish are not jelly, fish, or stars.

This post seems to indicate that it is colloquially used in the field:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627747

Although, I'd expect a science writer in the field to understand that the general public doesn't use this slang.

I have a friend who's a microbiologist and hanging out with him and his lab, "bug" is the preferred US slang term for any kind of microbe. In a more formal setting they'd be specific about the type of microbe. I don't think anyone is getting insects and microbes confused.

My infectious diseases professor said of Ebola "that's a horrible bug". It seems to be standard slang in the field.

You mean cooties?

I am afraid you are heavily misinterpreting. The article is obviously talking about off-by-one, out-of-bounds, use-after-free, and the rest of real world bugs.

I'm definitely doing my part to clean up the planet then!

If you're speaking colloquially, earthworms are bugs but they aren't insects. If you're being pedantic, houseflies are insects but they aren't bugs.

I've also heard lobsters described as bugs, since they are crustaceans similar to woodlice.

It's probably easier to list the invertebrates that aren't commonly called bugs than those that are. Squid, octopus and jellyfish get a pass. The immobile ones like corals and sponges as well, but I think that's about it.

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