A Fly Called Iyaiyai
And other true stories of scientific name-calling
By Susan Milius
Neal Evenhuis takes it rather well when a reporter phones his office at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu and asks, What were you thinking? Some of the scientific names he’s invented . . . . Well, . . . Did he do those things on purpose?
Most of the time, Evenhuis comes across as an eminent, sane scientist. He’s spent years mapping out the family trees and describing new species of flies, and he’s published such landmark works as a catalog of 5,100 fossil species. He’s officially named more than 300 kinds of flies, and most of the terms sound respectably unintelligible to the uninitiated. Several hours before fielding the phone call about his intentions, Evenhuis heard that he had been elected to the international commission overseeing scientific names for all of zoology.