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In Taxonomy, New Funding Is Going Once, Going Twice ...

Dec 11, 2008

How much would you pay to make a bunch of biologists refer to a Latin-ized version of your name? The Chicago Tribune reports on a growing trend to sell the naming rights for newly discovered species. In the latest instance, "Purdue University researchers will be auctioning off the naming rights to seven recently discovered types of bats [and two] Amazonian turtles," the article says.

The story quotes Purdue scientist John Bickham as saying "There's not very much money to support the kind of work it takes to discover these new species." This alternative approach can provide quite a bit of funding -- the Trib story notes that "a fish-naming auction in Monaco raised more than $2 million for conservation work in Indonesia." According to this blog post at Scientific American, bids for the bat names will start at $250,000.

 

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