A juvenile Gnathia marleyi, a recently described isopod from the Caribbean. The specific name was supposed to be in honor of Bob Marley... but! As the Parasite of the Day blog explains, the authors may have been too clever for their own good and made the name invalid.
Additional, 13 August 2012: The Parasite of the Day post has gone missing. It was there; see Tommy Leung’s mention of it on Google Plus. The basic claim was that the species name had been mentioned in a previous paper, which did not have a complete formal description of the isopod. And that is against the rules for naming animals. It is a nomen nudum, in the technical lingo.
External links
NSF press release
The link (http://dailyparasite.blogspot.com/2012/07/gnathia-marleyi-or-not.html) doesn't work, so it looks like I'll never know what was wrong with this name... =(
ReplyDeleteHm. I have updated the post accordingly. Thanks for the heads-up.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the person who claimed the name is wrong changed their mind? And deleted the post?
ReplyDelete