A brief dispatch from the new job

I've always been fond of playful and irreverent scientific names, so imagine my delight when I discovered that Paul Marsh, the taxonomist I will be working with over the coming year, is the same Paul Marsh who brought us the classic wasp names Heerz tooya, Heerz lukenatcha, and Verae peculya.

I'll be supporting Paul's morphological studies in the taxonomically troublesome wasp genus Heterospilus with molecular genetic data, but be warned. There are several hundred species yet to be named in the genus, and who knows what sort of nomenclatural mischief awaits.

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There are several hundred species yet to be named in the genus, and who knows what sort of nomenclatural mischief awaits.

Now there's a scary thought!

I've often thought it would be fun to find some obscure, undescribed, speciose genus, give it the name Dyslexia, and then use dyslexic patronymic epithets for all the species names to honor important workers in the group. For example:

- Dyslexia naylegelsoni for Gayle Nelson

- Dyslexia buckchellamyi for Chuck Bellamy

- Dyslexia wickrestcotti for Rick Westcott