A new fundraising scheme in the U.S. is giving people the chance to ‘buy’ a new species and have it named after them. For bids starting at $5000 you can get naming rights to a newly discovered organism.

The project is the brainchild of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to raise money for research.

One of the first people to take advantage of the programme is Jeff Goodhartz. Single and with no children, he wanted his name to live on after he is gone.

So he decided to splash out $5,000 to ‘name’ a sea worm, with the new species to be called ‘goodhartzorum’. 

Traditionally people who discovered new species named them after themselves, their loved ones or their heroes.

The fund-raising project has been prompted by cuts to the state budget for research. Rarer species fetch higher prices. 

According to estimates, only around 10 per cent of all living organisms have been found and registered by man. It means there’s a huge amount of work to be done in the field yet.

Specialists in taxonomy science are struggling to keep up with the constantly growing number of known organisms. It is a laborious process and involves DNA testing.

Several highly publicised auctions have already been held. The name for a new monkey species in Bolivia was given by an internet casino, GoldenPalace.com, who donated $650,000 to the Wildlife Conservation Society.