How were the Top 10 chosen?
An international committee of experts, chaired by Janine N. Caira of the University of Connecticut, selected the top 10 new species for this year s list. Nominations were invited through the species.asu.edu Web site and also generated by institute staff and committee members.
The Caira committee had complete freedom in making its choices and developing its own criteria, from unique attributes or surprising facts about the species to peculiar names.
This year s committee members included Philippe Bouchet, French National Museum of Natural History and International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature; Daphne G. Fautin, Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center, University of Kansas; Mary Liz Jameson, Wichita State University; Peter Kämpfer, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, and Institut für Angewandte Mikrobiologie, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen; Niels Peder Kristensen, Zoologisk Museum, University o