[HN Gopher] New species of fungus identified via Twitter
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New species of fungus identified via Twitter
Author : dnetesn
Score : 225 points
Date : 2020-05-16 10:23 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| kinleyd wrote:
| With hindsight one could say it was only a matter of time.
| peey wrote:
| The title here needs to include "..." in the original article.
|
| For a moment, I thought this would be a satirical article,
| characterizing some group as "new species".
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've put fungi in the title above.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| for the impatient:
|
| yes, it's what it sounds like.
|
| it's a fungus that lives on the reproductive organs of American
| centipedes.
|
| They noticed it in a tweet, and quickly confirmed it in their
| museum collections.
| SllX wrote:
| You missed the most important part. They named a parasitic
| genital fungus after Twitter.
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| "I hope that it will motivate professional and amateur
| researchers to share more data via social media." -- and soon
| we'll see trolls photoshopping images as "new discovery".
| shultays wrote:
| Pardon me for nitpicking but how fungus on fish is bizzare?
| kps wrote:
| Well, this particular fish is a millipede, which you've got to
| admit is atypical.
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| > the new species has now been given its official name,
| 'troglomyces twitteri'
|
| Academia always seems so mature and serious from outside, nice to
| know there can be some lighthearted humor there too :)
|
| As an aside, do you guys know any other Latin animal names that
| may have an 'untraditional' origin?
| schwartzworld wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigiphilus_garylarsoni
| [deleted]
| bitL wrote:
| Finnish NHL goalie:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaumatodryinus_tuukkaraski
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Frank Zappa has a couple (plus an asteroid):
|
| https://www.nme.com/news/music/frank-zappa-3-1234673
|
| https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/articles/features/7_animals_...
| asxd wrote:
| Stephen Colbert had a spider named after him, _Aptostichus
| stephencolberti_ :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptostichus_stephencolberti
| bsaf wrote:
| Not Latinified, but a key protein in brain and spinal cord
| development is called sonic hedgehog.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog
|
| The oddest thing was sitting through neuro lectures when this
| was introduced as if it was the most normal name in the world.
| We were looking at each other like "are we hearing this right?"
| shpongled wrote:
| Pretty much all of the proteins that were discovered in fruit
| flies and have a human ortholog have funny names: frizzled,
| wingless, piwi, nubbin, etc etc
| twic wrote:
| The gene which, when mutated, makes flies more sensitive to
| alcohol is called cheapdate.
| goliatone wrote:
| > The gene mutated in 'cheapdate' flies is actually
| called 'amnesiac', named because amnesiac mutant flies
| originally showed deficits in memory tests [1] I thought
| it was a joke but apparently not. TIL --- Not the best
| source but... [1]
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/04/06/inside-the-
| res...
| chaos_a wrote:
| >It has been noted that mention of a mutation in a sonic
| hedgehog gene might not be well received in a discussion of a
| serious disorder with a patient or their family.
|
| Imaging being told by a doctor that you have sonic the
| hedgehog disorder.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Mutations in this genes cause a birth defects called
| holoprosencephaly that is usually so severe you'd be
| telling the parents, not the patient :(
| whymauri wrote:
| I think there was a small movement to have it renamed,
| but I don't know if it went anywhere or still exists.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| "I'm sorry, but your son has Sanic's[1] Disease."
|
| [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sanic-hegehog
| [deleted]
| JimDabell wrote:
| Not quite what you're asking for, but you might be amused by
| the etymology of "thagomizer":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer
| [deleted]
| loopbit wrote:
| Another one, not mentioned here but one of my favorites:
|
| Psephophorus Terrypratchetti.
| pvaldes wrote:
| That was terryfic...
|
| I'll add another: Gollumjapyx smeagol
| whymauri wrote:
| IIRC, the discoverer of the RING protein domain couldn't come
| up with a name so they called it Really Interesting New Gene
| (RING) which duos as a pun for a ring finger.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RING_finger_domain
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Neobuthus Factorio:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neobuthus_factorio
|
| Named after the game Factorio, as the species was discovered by
| the father of the lead dev.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| And it looks a bit like Factorio's conveyor belts, to boot !
| NSCFType wrote:
| Nothing unusual about the origin on this one, but an amusing
| binomial nonetheless:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_blackbird
| n3k5 wrote:
| What's so funny about Turdus Maximus? I have a very great
| friend in Rome called Turdus Maximus.
| [deleted]
| uHuge wrote:
| Sounds/reads just like turd*-retard or dumb person, I
| assume.
| mattkrause wrote:
| It's a joke, sir.
|
| (That and the "In Rome" comment are both references to a
| classic Monty Python bit from _The Life of Brian_
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx_G2a2hL6U)
| jamieweb wrote:
| There are 4 species of damselfly named after each of the band
| members of Queen.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteragrion_freddiemercuryi
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| OTOH, some good plants are as traditional as you can get.
|
| When Marco Polo got to China, they had some plants & animals
| that had never been seen back in Europe.
|
| When Western botanists followed over the next few centuries,
| they brought back specimens. Especially medicinal plants before
| there were drug companies anyway. It would seem there might be
| something worthwhile about a material which made it into a
| pharmacopiea over a period of millennia.
|
| Eventually people started trying to give every different thing
| a different latin name, and when Linneaus got around to Chinese
| ginseng he dubbed it Panax Ginseng, simply preceding the
| Chinese name with panacea-derived "Panax" to classify the genus
| itself as the most highly regarded in the Far East for treating
| the widest variety of conditions. This must have also been
| considered relative to all the other plants that were known to
| the West for millennia themselves.
|
| American ginseng, known to the natives for millennia on that
| continent, became Panax Quinquefolius.
|
| Literally _plant with five leaves that can cure many things_.
| globular-toast wrote:
| There are actually so many "humorous" names of species and
| proteins that it's not really funny any more.
| sgeorge96 wrote:
| Look up "seenus peenus"
| haneefmubarak wrote:
| What are we looking for? The top relevant comment on Google
| is literally your comment / this thread.
| basjacobs wrote:
| This fly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaptia_beyonceae is
| named after Beyonce.
|
| "It was the unique dense golden hairs on the fly's abdomen that
| led me to name this fly in honour of the performer Beyonce as
| well as giving me the chance to demonstrate the fun side of
| taxonomy - the naming of species," Mr Lessard said.
| randoramax wrote:
| Tafazzin, a human protein named after the fictional character
| Tafazzi, an improbable wrestler whose super power is to got his
| own groin therefore causing the opponent to run away in
| reflected pain.
| Someone wrote:
| It's fairly normal for names of things few people are
| interested in such as insects and fungi.
|
| https://www.gadgette.com/2016/02/29/these-are-the-silliest-s...
| mentions, for example, _Pieza pi_ and _Spongiforma
| squarepantsii_.
|
| Google easily gives you more examples, for example
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-worlds-
| str..., which explains the rules are not very strict: _"The
| name must not be offensive, must be spelled in only the 26
| letters of the Latin alphabet and may be derived from any
| language. In fact, a name need not be derived from anything at
| all; the rules state that an arbitrary combination of letters
| is also perfectly acceptable."_
| throw_away wrote:
| No length limits, huh? Now, just gotta find a novel bug...
|
| edit: heh, you could code some nematode's dna sequence into
| its name.
| traverseda wrote:
| Go through the wikipedia list of illegal numbers, encode
| them into latin letters...
| conistonwater wrote:
| > _the rules state that an arbitrary combination of letters
| is also perfectly acceptable_
|
| To be honest, I always suspected this.
| vmception wrote:
| I haven't encountered a single serious industry.
|
| For example, many terms in finance are satire with a thin
| veneer of seriousness and professional candor in the name.
|
| Its a game of how long can you keep a straight face when you
| make up the name quantitative easing. Or when you make a
| derivative called DOOMs to market as an alternative to Credit
| Default Swaps, and do studies on payout when the company being
| bet on defaults.
| unwind wrote:
| Awesome thread, really cool to hear there are so many. I only
| knew about the Atlascopcosaurus [1], from working at Atlas (not
| in any way related to the lizard which was found in 1989).
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlascopcosaurus
| nkozyra wrote:
| "Spongiforma squarepantsii"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spongiforma_squarepantsii
| Jugurtha wrote:
| Phallus impudicus[^1].
|
| [^1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallus_impudicus
| contingo wrote:
| In the past my research has overlapped a fair bit with alpha
| taxonomy. Actually, whimsically or unconventionally named
| species are fairly common. Here are three examples that come to
| mind.
|
| [1] Forget Twitter, when it comes to species literally
| "discovered on the internet" I don't think you can top this
| one. In 2005 or so, specimens of a beautiful and striking sea
| urchin test, in the genus Coelopleurus, started cropping up on
| eBay as collectors' items. They were eventually confirmed as a
| new species. No, they were not named after eBay (the eventual
| choice of species epithet, 'exquisitus', was entirely fitting),
| but their status as the first new species determined directly
| from eBay specimens is pretty interesting, especially in
| bioconservation terms.
|
| [2] _Spongiforma squarepantsii_ is a fungus described in 2011.
| If you 've ever eaten a bolete (a cep, or porcini, in foodie
| speak), then you'll know there are mushrooms where the gills
| are replaced with a spongey layer of tightly-packed tubes. In
| its extremely wet habitat, _S. squarepantsii_ has become
| specialized from bolete ancestors to disperse its spores
| locally, by rainwater or animal transport, rather than by air,
| and so the entire fruiting body is reduced to a mass of
| convoluted sponge. From the Wiki article: "The surface of the
| fruit body has deep ridges and folds somewhat resembling a
| brain. It is sponge-like and rubbery -- if water is squeezed
| out, it will resume its original shape... when viewed with
| scanning electron microscopy, [the spore producing-tissue]
| somewhat resembles a seafloor covered with tube sponges,
| reminiscent of the fictitious home of SpongeBob... Although the
| epithet was originally rejected by the editors of Mycologia as
| "frivolous", Desjardin and colleagues insisted that "we could
| name it whatever we liked"."
|
| [3] In Borneo the other year I photographed a large, very hairy
| spider with bright red fangs that turned out to be a male color
| morph of a species named in 2008 as _Heteropoda davidbowie_.
| The linked Nat Geo article has more examples like that.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/aug/17/uknews.taxon...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spongiforma_squarepantsii
|
| [3]
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/10/explore-...
| andai wrote:
| This one's a protein: Pikachurin
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikachurin
| roberto wrote:
| Pisenotecus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piseinotecus
|
| The scientist had a dog called "Teco", and he stepped on him by
| accident. In Portuguese, "pisei no Teco".
| bonzini wrote:
| Aleiodes shakirae, so named because "parasitism by this species
| causes the host caterpillar to bend and twist its abdomen in
| various ways".
| personlurking wrote:
| Not sure if this counts:
|
| The Puerto Rican tody - a small, colorful bird - has the
| scientific name of todus mexicanus, even though it's endemic to
| Puerto Rico (where it's known simply as San Pedrito).
| Meanwhile, the todus portoricensis is actually a Cuban bird.
|
| Rene Lesson, a French ornithologist, described the birds in
| 1838, based on information he received from his brother, who
| had collected some of the species and erroneously noted their
| provenance. AFAIK, there have been attempts to correct these
| entrenched errors, but there has been no success in doing so.
| To further confuse things, there are Puerto Ricans who will
| refer to the island bird as the todus portoricensis - perhaps
| as a way of correcting for the error, or just due to the
| confusion surrounding it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_tody
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rene_Lesson
| sevencolors wrote:
| There is a chewing louse named after Gary Larson of The Far
| Side. :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigiphilus_garylarsoni
| losthobbies wrote:
| That's a xenomorph
| kebman wrote:
| For a moment there I thought I was alone, but I see you beat me
| to it xD Hmm or perhaps it's a little Maker...
| truebosko wrote:
| > The newly discovered parasitic fungus has now been given its
| official Latin name, Troglomyces twitteri.
|
| It only took me until 35 to realize these official, scientific-
| sounding names are part useful, part researchers trolling us.
| sushid wrote:
| Thankfully these are usually harmless (to us humans, anyway)and
| slightly funny. There are unfortunate ones like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog#Controversy_sur...
| out there though.
| swyx wrote:
| they should have let Twitter name it too in a Twitter poll
| chris_st wrote:
| Fungy McFungusface.
| Izkata wrote:
| But that's not where this fungus attaches - something I'm
| sure the internet would've picked up on when deciding a
| name:
|
| > The fungi are in a class of their own because they live
| on the outside of host organisms, and even on specific
| parts of bodies--in this case, on the reproductive organs
| of millipedes.
| scollet wrote:
| Boaty McBoatface
| smnrchrds wrote:
| Bigus Fungus
| athenot wrote:
| That would have likely ended in something along these lines:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/europe/boaty-
| mcboat...
| wltprgm wrote:
| since the article mentioned this, since when can people in the
| scientific field simply share their research data without facing
| any consequences?
|
| edit: sorry my bad, I realized my question was not making sense,
| I actually mean they can publish research data if the authority
| does not approve of it?
| simonh wrote:
| What sort of consequences do you mean?
| wltprgm wrote:
| sorry my bad, I realized my question was not making sense, I
| actually mean they can publish research data if the authority
| does not approve of it?
| simonh wrote:
| I don't think there is an authority in Denmark that could
| stop them, or would even want to. By default in most
| countries releasing any data is protected under free
| speech, unless the data belongs to someone else or is
| protected in some other way, such as if it has military
| value or is personal data covered by privacy rules.
| rsynnott wrote:
| What authority?
| brudgers wrote:
| _they just found a new type of parasitic fungus via Twitter._
|
| Sometimes, snark is thrust upon us.
| billfruit wrote:
| I have a few photographs, (may be most people have too,) of a few
| plants/fungi and animals/insects I couldn't identify, even after
| consulting resources like Wikipedia. What is the best way to get
| a species identification from a photograph.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Inaturalist is a great starting point! What's really funny is I
| identified a few millipedes on iNaturalist a couple weeks ago
| and the Twitter poster in this article (Derek Hennen) came
| along and narrowed it down for me. Very kind and knowledgeable
| person!
| neurostimulant wrote:
| You can post them to various relevant subreddits
| (/r/whatsthisbug, /r/mycology, etc). Identification requests
| are very common and people are receiving them well, so you'll
| likely to get some answers.
| azeirah wrote:
| Not sure what they're called, but there are subreddits for
| identifying bugs and plants and stuff
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Google (or quack) /r/whatisthis and the thing you want to
| identify. There's a bunch of subreddits like this.
|
| Here's a big list:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Whatisthis/wiki/links
| JoBrad wrote:
| This is one of my favorite subreddits. I don't think I've
| ever even posted in it. It's like real life Sherlock Holmes
| sometimes. Quite often people will post a piece of a car
| involved in a hit and run, and it will be solved in
| minutes. Or someone will post the oddest looking item, and
| not only will it get solved, but you'll learn a bit of
| background that you never knew.
| saadalem wrote:
| r/whatsthisbug/
| carlinmack wrote:
| iNaturalist, their license allows your pictures/data to be used
| in academic research
| MattBlissett wrote:
| As azeirah writes, subreddits or Facebook groups for people
| interested in the particular group or location will often help.
|
| For general wild plants and animals (and fungi and everything
| else) there's a computer vision tool from iNaturalist, which
| can be used independently [1], or when submitting an
| observation to the site -- by web browser or in the app. I
| usually start with that, then look at other observations on
| iNaturalist and Wikipedia pages for the species.
|
| If the photos are of ornamental plants, I think PlantNet's [2]
| model is trained on them.
|
| (I work at GBIF[3], where suitable data from iNaturalist[3b]
| and soon PlantNet is sent, and can then be freely downloaded
| and used in research etc.)
|
| [1] https://www.inaturalist.org/computer_vision_demo
|
| [2] https://plantnet.org/
|
| [3] https://www.gbif.org/
|
| [3b]
| https://www.gbif.org/dataset/50c9509d-22c7-4a22-a47d-8c48425...
| 101404 wrote:
| Twitter can be useful. But that takes work. My block list is
| probably 10 times longer than my follow list.
| Myrmornis wrote:
| I may be wrong but I suspect that there are many undescribed
| types of fungi out there and describing a new species isn't that
| unusual and there is nothing of interest in the fact that the
| photo in question was on twitter.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| They named it _troglomyces twitteri_ because, as far as they
| know, this is the first time one has been discovered through
| Twitter.
| jpindar wrote:
| Many HN readers believe that there is nothing on Twitter except
| politics and pictures of food, this is a counter example.
| tobr wrote:
| Maybe I'm being too dismissive, but this strikes me as an
| equivalent of existing-invention-but-using-a-computer software
| patents. I just don't see how it's particularly newsworthy or
| interesting that an image shared on Twitter was involved in the
| discovery.
|
| It allowed for a headline that made me click, though.
| wpietri wrote:
| The word news is literally the plural of new, as in new things.
| This is an new species discovered using a new method involving
| a relatively new communications medium. And in particular, it
| involves one of the strengths of this new medium: letting
| people share things with others that might be interested.
|
| A key difference between social media and older media is who
| gets to say yes to publication. For this photo to reach this
| researcher in a previous age, there would have been several
| people who had the ability to say no. And limited space would
| mean they'd have a strong incentive to say no. But now it just
| takes one person to say, "Here's a thing I think is
| interesting." Every reader also has their own editorial power;
| they can share and retweet.
|
| So for me, this is interesting because it's showing how the
| "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" adage applies to
| literal bugs. That the chaotic nature of Twitter is not just
| providing me with things I find interesting, but leading to
| actual scientific advance.
| wyattpeak wrote:
| I think you might be. Whatever its hype, Twitter (and its ilk)
| does enable a previously unheard of level of sharing of minor
| details.
|
| This fungus is exactly the sort of thing which would normally
| go missing in the vaults of a museum because the five people
| who ever saw it didn't recognise it as anything interesting.
| This is such a common phenomenon that trawling through museum
| collections is a non-trivial source of new species
| identifications.
|
| The fact that an image normally only seen by a few people
| should be shared to thousands, and hence a discovery made based
| on it, is significant because there were few avenues by which
| it could happen pre-social media.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| I love this story on many levels, but in particular what it says
| about the "trained eye".
| asimjalis wrote:
| > The photo shared on Twitter of the millipede Cambala by Derek
| Hennen. The two red circles indicate the presence of the fungus.
|
| I don't see the two red circles in the picture.
| graphpapa wrote:
| There are two red circles, but there is nothing identifiable to
| the untrained eye contained within them.
| erentz wrote:
| Right. Can someone explain? One of the circles has a white
| dot in the middle that looks like it could be just dust. The
| other a faint dark dot in the middle again that looks like
| maybe just dust or dirt. Nothing really in them that doesn't
| just look exactly like what's around them.
| gimboland wrote:
| Hence the phrase "her well-trained eyes" in the article: to
| her, your last sentence would be false, because she's spent
| years (maybe decades) working in this field.
| erk__ wrote:
| They are towards the top of the image, they are much easier to
| see if you open the image in full
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(page generated 2020-05-16 23:00 UTC)