Dermophis donaldtrumpi is the scientific named assigned to a blind, slimy, ground-burrowing, worm-like amphibian found in Panama. The right to name the creature was won by EnviroBuild, a U.K. based manufacturer of sustainable building material (decking, flooring, etc.). The company made the highest bid of $25,000 at a fundraising auction conducted this month by the conservation organization Rainforest Trust.
Typically, names for organisms are assigned by their discovers and the names are generally selected to honor people for their contributions to society. In this case, the name was chosen to draw attention to the notoriety of the person and his willfully blind policies towards the environment.
Aidan Bell at EnviroBuild provides the following succinct unflattering reasons for naming this Caecilian worm after trump -
Caecilians is taken from the Latin Caecus meaning “blind”, and have rudimentary eyes which can only detect light or dark. Capable of seeing the world only in black and white, Donald Trump has claimed that climate change is a hoax by the Chinese.
The dermophis genus grows an extra layer of skin which their young use their teeth to peel off and eat, a behaviour known as dermatrophy. As a method of ensuring their children survive in life Donald Trump prefers granting them high roles in the Oval Office.
The amphibians live almost entirely underground, believed to have lost their limbs at least 60 million years ago, as an adaptation to burrowing. Burrowing its head underground helps Donald Trump when avoiding scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and also appointed several energy lobbyists to the Environment Agency, where their job is to regulate the energy industry.
Caecilians have tentacles used in a sensory capacity to help them find prey. “This Thing Has Tentacles We Have No Idea About” was said by Juliette Kayyem, a former federal prosecutor and a Homeland Security official in the Obama administration talking special council Mueller’s investigation into alleged interference of Russia in US elections.
A couple of years ago, another organism, a moth, was named after trump, again for less than flattering reasons. In Jan 2017, evolutionary biologist Dr. Vazrick Nazari named the “blonde-haired moth with small genitals” after trump as Neopalpa donaldtrumpi. Besides the obvious reasons why it was named so, Nazari stated that he was hoping that it would inspire trump to take a more constructive approach towards protecting the environment. We all know how that turned out.
Organisms named after Obama
We now turn our attention to Obama, who is understandably very popular among scientists and researchers and has a host of organisms named after him. Here are a few of nature’s creatures, living and ancient, named after Obama —
Taxon (Name)
|
Organism Type
|
Aptostichus barackobamai
|
Spider, found in northern California
|
Spintharus barackobamai
|
Spider, found in the Caribbean islands |
Nystalus obamai
(video)
|
Bird, from Bolivia |
Caloplaca obamae
|
Lichen, found on Santa Rosa Island, CA
|
Obamadon gracilis
|
Extinct reptile, 66 million years ago
|
Paragordius obamai
|
Horsehair worm, found in Kenya
|
Baracktrema obamai
|
Parasitic flatworm, found in Malaysian turtles |
Etheostoma obama
(Obamafish!)
|
A very rare Fish, from eastern North America
|
Tosanoides obama
|
Fish, discovered in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, Hawaii. |
Obamus coronatus |
Extinct soft-bodied animal from the Ediacaran Period, 580-540 million years ago |
Obamus coronatus was the name conferred upon one of two newly discovered torus-shaped Ediacaran fossils in June 2018 by a UC Riverside-led team of researchers. The name was chosen by the researchers to “honor President Barack Obama’s passion for science”. The other fossil was named Attenborites janeae after Sir David Attenborough.
These soft-bodied animals are some of the earliest life forms, that lived in shallow oceans in the Ediacaran period, between 540 and 580 million years ago. The fossils for these animals were discovered in a particularly well-preserved fossil bed in the Flinders Ranges region of South Australia.
See diary www.dailykos.com/… for more info.
Tosanoides obama was the name assigned to a Hawaiian fish in Dec 2016. The fish was discovered during a June 2016 NOAA expedition to the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. It was named after Obama “to recognize his efforts to protect and preserve the natural environment, including the expansion of Papahānaumokuākea.”
See diary at www.dailykos.com/… for more info. and for some organisms named after other presidents and vice-presidents.
The Rainforest Trust
Rainforest Trust is a US-based nonprofit environmental organization focused on the purchase and protection of tropical lands to strategically conserve threatened species.
On December 8, Rainforest Trust conducted the largest species-naming auction in history. The names of four frogs, four orchids, a forest mouse, a trap-jaw ant, a salamander and a caecilian (legless amphibian) were on the auction block.
In total, the auction raised $182,500 for conservation action. Proceeds from the auction go to the protected areas in which these species were found, preserving vital habitat and saving the species from extinction. www.rainforesttrust.org/...
Here is a video about the organization -
Epilogue
Yes, there is no comparison between trump and Obama — in terms of their policies towards the environment or anything else for that matter. Organisms have been lovingly named after Obama to honor his legacy, his character and his stewardship of the environment. At the other end of the spectrum, organisms have been named after trump to remind him and the world about his destructive record on the environment and his lack of character and ethics.
Do you think naming such organisms after trump for these negative reasons is helpful? Will it result in any self-examination? Will it make any difference if the reasons were positive? Or does it not matter in any case and hence it is best to mock and shame him? Should naming rights of organisms be sold to private companies?
References and Further Reading
- EnviroBuild name an amphibian in honour of Donald Trump's commitment to environmental issues - www.envirobuild.com/...
- Blonde-Haired Moth With Small Genitals Named After Donald Trump — www.iflscience.com/…
- Review of Neopalpa Povolný, 1998 with description of a new species from California and Baja California, Mexico (Lepidoptera, Gelechiidae) — www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/…
- List of organisms named after famous people — en.wikipedia.org/…
- Obamus coronatus - an Organism from the Precambrian Eon named after Obama — www.dailykos.com/…
- Famously Named Organisms — www.dailykos.com/…