Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
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.
Life Science
Comments
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...
Posted by: nunatak | April 6, 2008 1:10 PM
A little dated, but see also the Auction of the Blue.
Posted by: JasonR | April 6, 2008 3:26 PM
Jason, I thought of you when I read this, remembering your earlier post.
Karen, ahem...*wink wink nudge nudge*
Posted by: kevin z | April 6, 2008 4:50 PM
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.
Posted by: Jim Lemire | April 6, 2008 5:23 PM
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.
Posted by: B | April 8, 2008 7:06 AM