13 September 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070910-9 / http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070910/full/070910-9.html
Fish for sale
Non-profits auction species names for conservation.Geoff Brumfiel
Over
the years, philanthropists have lent their names to art galleries,
schools and hospitals. But in a watershed auction, the world's rich
will be able to add their names to several new species of fish - all in
the name of charity.
On
Thursday 20 September, an auction to name ten new species of fish is
being held by the Monaco-based Monaco-Asia Society, a non-profit
organization devoted to Asian causes and Conservation International,
based in Arlington, Virginia. The fish are a few of the dozens
discovered by Conservation International during expeditions to reefs
off the coast of Indonesia's Papua Province in 2006.
Bidders
will arrive from around the world for a gala at Monaco's Oceanographic
Museum, which sits on a bluff high above the Mediterranean Ocean.
Prince Albert II will be in attendance, and auction house Christie's
will oversee the bidding pro-bono.
This
isn't the first auction for a species name. For example, in 2005 an
anonymous online bidder won the right to name a new kind of Bolivian
monkey for a charitable donation of US$650,000. But this is the first
time that multiple species will be auctioned in a single event,
according to Monaco-Asia Society president Francesco Bongiovanni.
There's nothing wrong with naming an animal after the rich
and famous, says Andrew Polaszek, executive secretary at the
International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature in London. The only
technical requirements, he says, are that the name must have a generic
and specific part and be published in a paper or monograph - something
that Conservation International will presumably do. Species are
routinely named after famous scientists, and one species of cave beetle
is even named after Adolf Hitler. He says that "you can essentially
name a species anything you want".
Bongiovanni
says he hopes the gala will raise US$1.2-1.4 million for further
expeditions and conservation efforts in the region. But is it fair to
name a species after a wealthy patron, rather than the scientist who
discovered or described it? Bongiovanni says yes - especially because
it is all for the greater good of the fish. "At the end of the day," he
says, "these species need names."