The rights to name an Osedax species is up for grabs for $25,000.
To set the prices, Scripps researchers considered several factors, including rarity, the species’ importance to science and how expensive and difficult it was to collect. Also for $25,000, one’s name can be on a deep sea worm affectionately called the green bomber, which drops luminescent green particles to distract predators.
Not that I have the answers and I make no comment on ramifications of such, but what are you thoughts on auctioning off species names? More at the San Diego Union Tribune.
Osedax, eh? This must be Adrian Glover theme week! I think this selling species name thing might be a good mechanism for raising funds for the Beagle project…
A little dated, but see also the Auction of the Blue.
Jason, I thought of you when I read this, remembering your earlier post.
Karen, ahem…*wink wink nudge nudge*
On some level, I get it, but personally, I don’t like it – I blogged about this and had a nice little discussion started in the comments a few months back.
I think they might get more money at auction if they offered to name a zombie bone-eating worm after someone’s ex-spouse. Yet more controversy there of course.