From DAVID CAMERON DUFFY
It is not without irony that, as the public becomes more concerned about
the loss of biodiversity, the ability of biologists to describe and study
biodiversity has been increasingly hindered by lack of funds. Many museums,
formerly bastions of systematics and taxonomy, are now apparently content
to devote their scarce resources to attracting and entertaining crowds in
the belief that numbers reflect success in science education. Taxonomy runs
the risk of becoming an endangered discipline.
Rather than bemoan the lack of public funds and the Disneyland tactics of
museum directors, it is time for taxonomists to privatise and raise their
own money by selling to the public the right to name new species.
Taxonomists have been naming species after people for years for nothing. Now
it is time to charge for it. For example, a member of the public, concerned
about rainforests, could send £50 to have a soil nematode
named after her. Framed on her wall, the page describing and naming her
species would be proof-positive ever after that she made a contribution to
biodiversity.
Dull and tedious individuals might object that few people will donate money
to have any animal, much less a soil nematode, named after them. With proper
marketing, anything is possible. For example, taxonomists should, as a
matter of urgency, name a rainforest bee after the rock singer Sting.
Madonna clearly needs a gynaecoid orchid named after her; Margaret
Thatcher, a bombardier beetle; and Dan Quayle, a species in the plant family
Solanaceae, which could then be properly known as Quayle’s potato.
Imagine the possibilities of celebrities posing with their beasties.
Bookings on the American Tonight show would follow. Appearances in People
magazine and the tabloids would be routine. Taxonomists, long the
wallflowers of cocktail parties, would soon find themselves surrounded by
beautiful people hoping against hope that the taxonomists would deign to
immortalise them with a species’s name.
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The public would soon get into the act, naming parasitic wasps after stingy
ex-boyfriends; butterflies after lady friends; dung beetles after their
bosses; and, for the quietly ostentatious not content to follow the herd,
even soil nematodes after themselves. The rich could splurge for a genus
name or even a family. The prices for rarer new species such as mammals and
birds would naturally be higher, following the rules of supply and demand,
but bulk sales of more numerous and cheaper taxa would still ensure funding
for taxonomists.
It may not save biodiversity, but it is a start and museum directors just
don’t seem to have any better ideas.
David Cameron Duffy
Shelter Island Heights,
New York state
