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.
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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.