I'm currently working on a project to assemble species names for various uses, and came across this interesting post by Podblack Cat on Podblack Blog. The author explores the interesting variants of species names of interesting species...
What about a spider called Draculoides bramstokeri? Or the sand-crab Albunea groeningi, named after Matt 'The Simpsons' Groening? A big winner in terms of nomenclature nods would have to be Frank Zappa, who has at least five different species named after him... one because the orb-weaver spider, Pachygnatha zappa, features abdominal marking that resembles his mustache. Oh, and Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has... yeah, you guessed it, an endangered rabbit named after him.
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Link?
Link is here - thank you!
http://podblack.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/the-specialness-of-species/
I'm pretty sure that my linking to podblack's blog is cursed somehow. This is my second run at it.
But now everything should be just fine...
Only a species? I have whole classes of frogs named after me :)
No seriously, it may well be an urban myth that the "discoverer" of a species solely gets to choose the name, but it still impresses me that so many discoverers still choose to honor their own strange creative interests instead of just amending their own names.
Sorry, I can't help pointing out that Draculoides bramstokeri (named by my PhD supervisor, as it happens) is a schizomid, not a spider.