How cool is this? Some Brazilian scientists have named a new species of fish after Wesleyan Professor Barry Chernoff. Barry is the founding director of the College of the Environment and the Robert F. Schumann Professor of Environmental Studies. The abstract from the scientific journal Zootaxa reads as follows:
The species of Bryconops is described from the rio Maicuru, a tributary of the left margin of the lower Amazon River, Pará, Brazil. Bryconops chernoffi new species, differs from all its congeners by the presence of an elongated dark patch of pigmentation immediately after the posterodorsal margin of the opercle, running vertically from the supracleithrum to the distal margin of the cleithrum (vs. absence of a similar blotch), and by a dark dorsal fin with a narrow hyaline band at middle portion of dorsal-fin rays (vs. dorsal fin hyaline or with few scattered chromatophores). It differs further from all its congeners, except B. colanegra, by the presence of a blurred black stripe at the anal fin.
It doesn’t really resemble my friend Barry, who in addition to being a fish scientist and environmentalist, is also a guitar player and songwriter. And now he has fish named in his honor. A true species of Wesleyan, IMHO.