Under the title "Kleine Tiere – ganz groß" (big moment for small creatures), Inforadio, run by Berlin radio station rbb, launched a competition in cooperation with the Naturkundemuseum Berlin. Listeners were asked to find a name for some members of the animal kingdom. A jury of experts, together with an Inforadio listener, have now decided on the most appropriate name for each creature out of hundreds of suggestions.
Under the title "Kleine Tiere – ganz groß" (small animals in the limelight), Inforadio, run by Berlin radio station rbb, launched a competition in cooperation with the Naturkundemuseum Berlin. Four animal species will now be given a name, consisting of two words each. The first part is the pre-defined name of the genus. For the second part, listeners‘ ingenuity was called for. The creatures in question were a cockroach wasp, a wasp mantisfly, a fresh water shrimp and a short-winged beetle. A jury of experts, together with an Inforadio listener, have now decided on the most appropriate name for each of them out of over 250 suggestions.
The beetle has been named Scopaeus arfakmontium. Its name refers to the place where the new species was discovered – the Arfak mountains in western Papua.
The cockcroach wasp Ampulex fregata from Singapore is just as red as a frigate bird.
The mantisfly from Vietnam, Euclimacia radioquaesentis, was given the name “searched for by the radio” – there are only six specimens in the collections of the Museum für Naturkunde.
Most of the suggestions referred to the freshwater shrimp from Sulawesi/Indonesia, which will now be called Caridina clandestine, an allusion to its inconspicuous existence.
The selected contestants can now look forward to a guided tour of the collections and the animals they have named, in the company of scientists of Berlin’s natural history museum. A publication about the four species is under way in order to make the naming process official.