Is this really an honor?

[cynatnite]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=857&ncid=757&e=10&u=/nm/20050414/od_uk_nm/oukoe_odd_beetles

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld can now also be called bushi, cheneyi and rumsfeldi, or simply slime-mould beetles.

Two former Cornell University entomologists named three species in the genus Agathidium after the U.S. leaders, Cornell announced on Wednesday.

Quentin Wheeler and Kelly Miller christened 65 new species of slime-mold beetles, named for the fungi-like molds on which they feed, which they discovered after collecting thousands of specimens for a study of their evolution and classification.

Wheeler, who after 24 years as a professor of entomology and plant biology at Cornell is now the keeper and head of entomology at the Natural History Museum in London, said the U.S. leaders were being honored for having "the courage of their convictions."

The bushi beetle is found in southern Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia; the rumsfeldi is from Oaxaca and Hidalgo in Mexico, and the cheneyi is known from Chiapas, Mexico, Wheeler said

[magellan]

1. Slime-mould is a step up for these three. (nt)

[Swamp Rat]

2. HAHA! I love it!

Entomologists with a good sense of humor. :D

[DrDebug]

3. Cool. They are upholding a tradition. Anophthalmus Hitleri

Anophthalmus Hitleri is a tiny blind cave beetle

There are more than 100 species of cave beetles in Slovenia, and among the thousands of insects that are populating the country there is one that did not have much luck. It is a species belonging to the Anophthalmus group and is known to dwell in some 15 caves in central Slovenia. To prove the fact that destiny does have a sense of irony; the beetle takes its name after the Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler. Being an endangered insect, the Anophthalmus Hitleri is making Slovenian biologists and authorities worried for they have a hard time managing a fight against "poachers", wrote Slovenian weekly Mladina in an interview with cave fauna expert Slavko Polak.

The beetle's origins date back to 1933, when Slovenian nature scientist Vladimir Kodri? came across an unknown species of cave beetle from the Anophthalmus family in a cave near Celje in central Slovenia. In order to categorise the beetle, Kodri? turned to the collector, dealer, and German sympathiser Oskar Scheibl of Zagreb, Croatia. He gave the beetle the temporary name of Anophthalmus Kodrici, in honour of his discoverer. By the time Scheibl had ascertained that the beetle was indeed a new species never described before, Germany was celebrating its new chancellor Adolph Hitler. As Hitler's ardent admirer, School dismissed the first version of the beetle's name, labelling it Anophthalmus Hitleri. He then informed Hitler's office in Berlin about "his" finding and the name he had given it. Today, the holotype - the specimen used as the basis for the original description of a species - of the Anophthalmus Hitleri is kept in a Basel museum in Switzerland.
- http://slonews.sta.si/index.php?id=12&s=1

[illflem]

4. Especially fitting

since most beetles spend most of the their lives in the maggot form