Can species naming drive scientific attention? A perspective from plant-feeding arthropods

How do researchers choose their study species? Some choices are based on ecological or economic importance, some on ease of study, some on tradition – but could the name of a species influence researcher decisions? We asked whether phytophagous arthropod species named after their host plants were more likely to be assayed for host-associated genetic differentiation (or ‘HAD’; the evolution of cryptic, genetically isolated host specialists within an apparently more generalist lineage). We chose 30 arthropod species (from a Google Scholar search) for which a HAD hypothesis has been tested. We traced the etymologies of species names in the 30 corresponding genera, and asked whether HAD tests were more frequent among species whose etymologies were based on host-plant names (e.g., Eurosta solidaginis, which attacks Solidago) vs. those with other etymologies (e.g., Eurosta fenestrata, from Latin fenestra, or window). Species with host-derived etymologies were more likely to feature in studies..., To find phytophagous arthropod species for which the hypothesis of host-associated differentiation had been tested, we performed a Google Scholar search on December 19, 2019, for the terms “HAD insect phytophagous herbivorous host associated differentiation”. In Scholar, this returns papers including all those terms in title or body, but the search is not case-sensitive. We did not impose any date limits on the search, which returned about 25,900 results ordered by “relevance” (which reflects Google’s search algorithms). From this list, we chose the first 30 papers that met two simple criteria for inclusion. First, we retained only papers that tested, with genetic data, the HAD hypothesis for a phytophagous insect or mite using more than one host plant (we disregarded whether the paper’s results supported or refuted the hypothesis). Second, we retained only papers that indicated the species name of the HAD-tested species in the title or abstract. In addition, we removed the genus Euura ...,