Comment by TulliusCicero
6 hours ago
> The species was first documented in the 1970s and, being fairly new to scientific observation, has yet to be scientifically described. Because of this, LPSO has no official scientific name.
Is that a joke? It takes over 50 years to come up with a scientific name for a species?
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2227516-octopuses-were-...:
“In the late 1960s, Aradio Rodaniche was diving off the coast of Nicaragua when he made the discovery that has tantalised cephalopod biologists ever since.
[…]
The discovery of an apparently social species was so implausible that few believed it and Rodaniche’s story passed into legend. He published a short account of the species in 1991, but hardly anyone had seen the animal and no one could confirm the report”
That takes account of (at least) a few decades.
I also think the issue isn’t coming up with a name but scientifically describing it. That (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_description) can take time.
Finally, the group of people interested in having a species description may not be very large; and the group willing and able to create one even smaller. Nowadays the money in biology is in biochemistry.
> Finally, the group of people interested in having a species description may not be very large; and the group willing and able to create one even smaller.
Perhaps, but the caption on the picture in the article [0] says that it was taken at "an aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences", which sounds like the kind of place where octopus scientists hang out. And the article cited in Wikipedia [1] has quite a few authors, which makes me think that there's something more complicated going on here.
[0]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Larger_Pacific_Strip...
[1]: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134152
Huh interesting. I, like most San Franciscans, know the Cal Academy as primarily a public aquarium with a smaller research arm associated with it. I didn’t know they do the kind of research that leads to species description. Would have expected them to be downstream of that.
Hey, that's unfair. I'm working through the backlog as fast as I can!
Blame I.T. - they keep resetting my password and I'm not allowed to write it down on a Post-It like back in the old days...