There is a unique way by researchers from the German Karlsruhe Natural History Museum and the Zoological State Collection in Munich, Germany, when discovered hundreds of new species of beetles of the genus Trigonopterus. They use the phone book to name all of the new species.
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| Unusual method: German biologists looked to the phone book to name ten new species. (Picture from: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/) |
"More than 100 named species in this way proved to be five times faster than traditional naming techniques," said Alexander Riedel, one of the researchers, on Thursday, March 28, 2013.
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| This picture shows one of the newly described species, Trigonopterus echinus. (Picture from: http://www.livescience.com/) |
Alexander Riedel and his partner, Michael Balke, knew it would take a very long time to describe and name for the hundreds of new species of beetle with the old fashioned way. So they created a scientific shortcut to sort the DNA portion of each beetle to sort out the different species. And then, they took pictures of each beetle species are to be incorporated into the data bank of the Species ID, a sort of Wikipedia pages to biodiversity cataloging.
To speed up the species naming, Riedel and Balke using a common family name that taken from the Papua New Guinea phone book. For example, on one of the new species that given the name "Trigonopterus moreaorum" whereas the "Morea" is one of the common family name in Papua New Guinea.
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| This is a picture of Trigonopterus moreaorum, which is named after the popular Papuan family surname "Morea." (Picture from: http://www.livescience.com/) |
The species naming with the person's name is not new in the scientific world. Some insects and other organisms was named after world celebrity. Among
other things, the horse flies "Scaptia (Plinthina) beyonceae," named after the pop diva Beyonce Knowles, the two species of moss and spiders
were given a name inspired by the name of President Barack Obama;
Caribbean crustacean species named after reggae musician Bob Marley, and
deadly
parasitic wasps that are named from Beatrix Kiddo, killer hero
character played by actress Uma Thurman in the Kill Bill films (jump to related article).
Total 101 of new beetle species that given name by the "phone book" method. The Riedel and Balke discovery is published in the journal ZooKeys. The taxonomy rapid methods could be seen in detail reviews on the Frontiers in Zoology journal. *** [EKA | FROM VARIOUS SOURCES | LIVESCIENCE | MAHARDIKA SATRIA HADI | KORAN TEMPO 4184]
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