Want an animal species named after you? Get out your checkbook!

[astro]

Ants: What’s in a Name?

Nov. 14, 2005 issue - Genesis 2:19 says that “whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” But Adam probably wouldn’t have named a spider Calponia harrisonfordi, a sea snail Bufonaria borisbeckeri or an ant Proceratium google. Those are the work of environmentalists who’ve stumbled on an unlikely source of publicity and revenue: scientific species names. Lately, the monikers have become celebrity gifts so common you’d think they were showing up in swag bags. Sting has a tree frog, Harrison Ford has an ant as well as that spider and Mick Jagger has a snail, albeit one that hasn’t aged as well as he has. (It’s extinct.) In April, a dot-com paid $650,000 for the right to call the newly discovered Callicebus aureipalatii the GoldenPalace.com monkey.

Now Brian Fisher, a leading entomologist, is opening up the privilege to regular folks. In exchange for a $10,000 donation, he’ll let you christen one of the 600-odd new species of ants he’s found in Madagascar. (For just $15,000 more, you can buy an entire genus, but act now—there are only four available.)

[Sternvogel]

Add John Cleese to the list of people immortalized by having species named after them. Avahi cleesei is a lemur of western Madagascar.

[Colibri]

I knew I should have gone into entomology. There just ain’t enough birds left to name.

[Ranchoth]

I wonder if any neural parasite names are up for grabs. “Ranchoth’s Brainworm” or “Gaston’s Mind-Scourge” has a nice ring to it.

[Polycarp]

@Colibri

I knew I should have gone into entomology. There just ain’t enough birds left to name.

Swifts. There are so many variant “expert opinions” that you could define new species and genera almost at random and end up agreeing in part with somebody. (Besides, I want someone to write up Apos jonathani var. laputensis. :))

[astro]

@Polycarp

Swifts. There are so many variant “expert opinions” that you could define new species and genera almost at random and end up agreeing in part with somebody. (Besides, I want someone to write up Apos jonathani var. laputensis. :))

Sooo… what are you offering to be immortalized forever? A cladist has gotta eat you know.

[Tuckerfan]

Gary Larson has a flea named after him.

[ethelbert]

I was going to pay, then I decided to just change my name to Gigantopithecus Blackii. It was much cheaper and it confuses the telemarketers.

[Kythereia]

Can I get a swan species named after me? Considering the moniker I used on the boards, that’d be super-cool.

[Epimetheus]

What about virologists, can they start naming variants of the Rhinovirus after people?

[Colibri]

@Tuckerfan

Gary Larson has a flea named after him.

It was actually a kind of louse found only on owls: Strigiphilus garylarsoni, “Gary Larson’s Owl-lover.”

[Colibri]

@Polycarp

Swifts. There are so many variant “expert opinions” that you could define new species and genera almost at random and end up agreeing in part with somebody.

I actually found what I think is a new bird subspecies in Africa (a kind of thrush), which someone else thinks is probably a new species. I haven’t described it yet because it will involve me in a cladistics war.