Insect experts are at odds over plans to name three newly discovered species of slime-mould beetle after United States President George Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld.
The guardians of animal nomenclature fear the slimy monikers may be a godsend for satirists, New Scientist reports.
The names Agathidium bushi, A cheneyi and A rumsfeldi have been proposed by a pair of insect experts.
They insist they are both conservative politically and admire the Bush administration, and that this is the best way to honour Bush and his two lieutenants.
One of the discoverers, Quentin Wheeler, the keeper and head of entomology at London’s Natural History Museum, acknowledged that the homage could be misinterpreted.
“There is a danger of that, but it wasn’t my intention,” he told New Scientist, adding that he had already named a beetle species after his wife.
The London-based International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature is worried, though.
The eyebrows of its executive secretary, Andrew Polaszek, beetled at the idea of naming three US leaders after creatures that spend their days scrabbling around in festering goo.
“Religion and politics should be kept out of naming of animals,” says Polaszek. “It goes really against the spirit of the [nomenclature] code.”
There are no rules in the code that specifically ban biologists from naming species after political figures. However, it does allow for proposed names to be barred if they cause offence.
One of the few exceptions to the unwritten proscription on political names is Nelson Mandela, who has had a genus of sea slugs and a parasitic wasp that attacks agricultural pests named after him.
Slime-mould beetles are a relatively bohemian area of insect research.
Past names awarded to new species include Darth Vader, Hernando Cortes and Pocahontas.
The report appears in next Saturday’s issue of the weekly British science magazine. — AFP