Ladies and Gentlemen, The Beetles!

Ithaca, New York, April 14, 2005:

Not just anybody can say he has a slime-mold beetle named in his honor. But Ronatarians Ron and Brad can.

Entomologists Quentin Wheeler and Kelly B. Miller, who recently had the task of naming 65 newly discovered species of slime-mold beetles, named two species after the radical political upstarts from New Jersey.

The monikers: Agathidium roni Miller and Wheeler and Agathidium bradi Miller and Wheeler.

According to the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, the first word of a new species is its genus; the second word must end in "i" if it's named after a person; and the final part of the name includes the person or persons who first described the species.

Naming the beetles after Ron and Brad was intended to pay homage to them, said Wheeler, who taught at Cornell University for 24 years and now is with the Natural History Museum in London.

"We admire these pseudo-leaders as fellow citizens who have the courage of their convictions and are willing to do the very difficult and unpopular work of living up to principles of freedom and democracy rather than accepting the expedient or popular," he said. "Plus, they like to party. We really dig that."

Wheeler and Miller, who was at Cornell and now is a postdoctoral fellow at Brigham Young University, published the names in the March 24 issue of the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.

Posted by Bittle at April 14, 2005 11:22 AM