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Want scientific immortality? Name a sea worm

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-01 11:13

LOS ANGELES - Jeff Goodhartz is single and has no children. But he wanted to ensure the family name would live on after he's gone.

So he paid $5,000 to have a newfound sea worm given the Goodhartz name, "goodhartzorum."

Jeff Goodhartz holds an image of a new species of Belize Featherworm while sitting in a science classroom at Granite Hills High School, where he is currently teaching, in El Cajon, Calif., June 4, 2008. Goodhartz bought the naming rights for the worm from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which unveiled its name-a-species program earlier this year. This modern twist on taxonomy is a way to raise research money, and many groups have been doing it. [Agencies]

"This really jazzes me up," said the 55-year-old high school math teacher whose namesake is translucent with a flamboyant blue tuft. "It will be out there, the family name."

And it will be swimming in the Belize mangroves where someone else discovered it.

Goodhartz bought the naming rights from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which unveiled its name-a-species program earlier this year. This modern twist on taxonomy is a way to raise research money, and lots of groups have been doing it.

But its growing popularity has rekindled a debate over whether the practice invites fake discoveries and has led to a push for oversight.

"It is conceivable that someone could fabricate a new species in order to make money, if it were shown to be lucrative," said Andrew Polaszek, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

Taxonomy ranks among the world's oldest professions, dating back to 18th century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who popularized the classification system still in use today. Of the 30 million or so species of animals, plants and microbes on Earth, only about 1.8 million have been named and identified so far.

Traditionally, the discoverer gets to christen the new organism. All living things have a two-part scientific name, usually in Latin. It's common for discoverers to name a new species after themselves or in honor of their spouses, children, colleagues, benefactors or even celebrities.

In recent years, species names have gone from finders keepers to being auctioned off or sold to donors to support research as other funding has dried up. Not all species are created equal. The rarer and more evolved the organism, the more money it tends to fetch.

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