Vegetarian Spider!

[slaneyder]

Researchers have found a rare spider that lives in South and Central America that, literally, is an herbivore. The reason this is so, so cool is that up until recently, it was commonly thought that spiders were physically incapable of living on plants as a primary food source.

Comments

[caketime]

Bagheera kiplingi- are they fucking kidding me? That name is so fucking lame! D:

p.s. super cool article

[c_yo_yus]

Yeah... Jungle Book reference? Seriously?

[caketime]

I know and that latinification (such a word) of Kipling is just so ... UGHHHH. D:

[davegodfrey]

kiplingi is the correct way of doing it. Adding the suffix -i, or -ia, if the person is female, is how it is done. Frankly as this list demonstrates Bagheera kiplingi is pretty ordinary as names go.

[caketime]

Frankly it's not about what's correct, it's just that it should get a decent name. (And that list makes me even more aggravated.)

[late_and_tired]

Apparently, according to the NatGeo article I read on this a couple days ago, Jungle Book was quite popular when they found a dead husk of this spider a hundred years ago. Hence the name. Until now, no one had bothered looking for it again, but it had already been described.

[davegodfrey]

Well I like it ;) and if you want a species to be named after kipling, then its kiplingi or nothing I'm afraid. Additionally, the clauses relating to priority means it can't have one. (Even if they spelt it wrong.)

(You might not want to look at the puns page then...)

[caketime]

lol

Ochisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Dolichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Florichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Marichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Nanichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Peggichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Polychisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Kirkaldy was criticized for frivolity by the London Zoological Society in 1912.

This I like. I can totally get why scientists smuggle in their or a friend's name somewhere. (The reason it's okay is that it's completely unrelated but self-centred so it has a point; however naming it after a character in a book or a person unrelated to the findings is just unrelated and so twatish. borisbeckeri - REALLY?!)

[davegodfrey]

When there are that many species out there, one can be forgiven (or imho) encouraged to give name them after things and people you like. Why not immortalise every scientist's favourite cartoonist?

[mona_noke]

Theres a gnat gnus and species called Aha Ha

Agra vation Erwin, 1983 (a carabid beetle)
Ba humbugi Solem, 1976 (a snail from Mba Island, Fiji)
Brachyanax thelestrephones Evenhuis, 1981 (a fly; translated from the Greek it means "little chief nipple twister")

Cartwrightia cartwrighti Cartwright, 1967 (a beetle)
Colon rectum Hatch, 1933 (a colonid beetle)
Dissup irae (Kovalev), 1989 (a "difficult to see" fossil fly)
Geoballus caputalbus Crabill, 1969 (a millipede named after its collectors, George Ball and Donald Whitehead)

Polemistus chewbacca Menke, 1983 (a wasp; named after the "Star Wars" character)
Polemistus vaderi Menke, 1983 (a wasp; named after another "Star Wars" character)

Reissa roni Evenhuis, 2002 ( a microbombyliid fly)

although theres a great wealth of names here http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/menke.html
and here:http://www.curioustaxonomy

[hunter_san]

Thank you! I've been meaning to find the binomical name of "dick head" for awhile now.