Comment by gucci-on-fleek
10 hours ago
> 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...
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.
That may be so, but I would expect the people who work there to be 1) interested in getting a species name for the unnamed species they had in captivity, and 2) certainly know who to reach out to to get a species description even if they were unable or unwilling to do so themselves.