Escape Taxonomy

Over the weekend, Escape Pod received one of the highest honors possible for a science fiction entity: someone named a species after us.

The newest member of the Escape Pod team, Zelomorpha effugia, is a Costa Rican parasitoid wasp. The taxonomic methods used to identify it (and the other newly-described species in this publication¹) are new and perhaps controversial. But I, for one, welcome our scientific controversy overlords.

This delights me beyond words. Ever since I was a child reading Far Side cartoons, the idea of having a species named after something I’ve done was a dream beyond imagining.

1. Meierotto, S., Sharkey, M. J., Janzen, D. H., Hallwachs, W., Hebert, P. D., Chapman, E. G., & Smith, M. A. (2019). A revolutionary protocol to describe understudied hyperdiverse taxa and overcome the taxonomic impediment. Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift, 66, 119