nature ecology & evolution https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02102-z Correspondence Eponyms are important tools for biologists in the Global South G uedes et al.1 argue that eponymous scientific names, despite their long tradition in biology, have no place in the modern world. They want to erase eponyms assigned to species in the past and want scientists to stop naming new species after people. Both of these proposals would hurt science, and disproportionately hurt science in the Global South — the region that is supposed to be the primary beneficiary of their proposal. As Guedes et al. recognize, naming species after people has always been a powerful tool that biologists have used to thank their patrons, recognize their field assistants and honour their colleagues or loved ones. This is the highest hon- our that an individual biologist can bestow on a person; we have very little else at our disposal. In recent years some biologists have also used the naming of species to raise funds for research and, especially, for conservation. Guedes et al. mentioned the auctioning of names by the Rain- forest Trust. Fundación EcoMinga2 —an Ecua- dorian non-governmental organization that is managed by some of us — was the beneficiary of two naming auctions for species new to sci- ence3,4. With these funds the foundation was able to pay for journal publication fees so that the resulting articles would be open access as well as pay for some of the logistics of the inves- tigations. Most importantly, we were able to use the funds to help to directly conserve many hundreds of hectares of the habitats of these very same species. In many megadiverse coun- tries of the tropics, funds for these purposes are otherwise scarce or non-existent. Although it is true that most eponyms assigned have historically honoured Euro- peans, the pace of species discovery in tropi- cal countries is currently high and in the past few decades local taxonomists (at least in Latin America) are overtaking European scientists in making these discoveries. The power of bestowing eponyms has shifted to these local scientists in the tropical countries where most undiscovered species live. For example, in the Ecuadorian province of Tun- gurahua (where Fundación EcoMinga began its conservation work) all 15 new frog species that have been discovered there in the past 15 years were described in publications with Ecuadorian lead authors, and in many cases all other co-authors were also Ecuadorian. Eleven of those species descriptions used eponyms. Using eponyms, local scientists can now fund their work, honour local scientists5, recognize Indigenous leaders6 and policy-makers7, and help to save their study organisms from extinc- tion3. It is unfortunate and discriminatory that some members of the scientific community want to take away this tool just at the moment that non-European biologists are becoming its main beneficiaries. Rather than eliminat- ing eponyms, causing chaos in the existing nomenclature and erasing the rich and con- voluted personal history of biology, we should instead embrace them enthusiastically and use them to generate and record the next and more-diverse chapters of that history. Lou Jost   1,2,3 , Mario Humberto Yanez-Muñoz   3, Jorge Brito   3, Carolina Reyes-Puig   3,4, Juan Pablo Reyes-Puig   1,3, Juan M. Guayasamín   5, Santiago R. Ron   6, Catalina Quintana   7, Gabriel Iturralde   8,9, Luis Baquero   8,9, Marco Monteros1,3,9,10, Alina Freire-Fierro   11,12,13,14, Diana Fernández   15, Glenda Mendieta-Leiva   16, J. Francisco Morales17, Adam P. Karremans18, J. Antonio Vázquez-García19, Gerardo A. Salazar   20, Eric Hágsater21,22, Rodolfo Solano   23, Germán Carnevali Fernández-Concha24 & Marcelo Arana   25 1Fundación EcoMinga, Quito, Ecuador. 2Population Biology Foundation, Grand Junction, CO, USA. 3Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INABIO), Quito, Ecuador. 4Instituto IBIOTROP, Museo de Zoología & Laboratorio de Zoología Terrestre, Colegio de Ciencias Biológicas y Ambientales COCIBA, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Cumbayá, Ecuador. 5Instituto Biósfera USFQ, Laboratorio de Biología Evolutiva, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Cumbayá, Ecuador. 6Museo de Zoología, Escuela de Biología, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador. 7Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador. 8Grupo de Investigación en Medio Ambiente y Salud BIOMAS, Carrera de Ingeniería Agroindustrial y Alimentos, Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias Agropecuarias, Universidad de Las Américas, Quito, Ecuador. 9Grupo Científico Calaway Dodson: Investigación y Conservación de Orquídeas del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador. 10Reserva: The Youth Land Trust, Washington, DC, USA. 11UTCEC Herbarium—CAREN/Universidad Técnica de Cotopaxi, Latacunga, Ecuador. 12Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA. 13Missouri Botanical Garden, St Louis, MO, USA. 14Universidad Regional Amazónica Ikiam, Tena, Ecuador. 15Unidad de Investigacion, Herbario Nacional del Ecuador Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, Quito, Ecuador. 16Philipps University Marburg, Marburg, Germany. 17National Herbarium of Trinidad and Tobago, Department of Life Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. 18Lankester Botanical Garden, University of Costa Rica, Cartago, Costa Rica. 19Herbario IBUG, Instituto de Botánica, Departamento de Botánica y Zoología, Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Biológicas, Agropecuarias y Ambientales, Nextipac, Zapopan, Mexico. 20Departamento de Botánica, Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico. 21Herbamo, Mexico City, Mexico. 22HUH Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA, USA. 23Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigación para el Desarrollo Integral Regional unidad Oaxaca, Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Oaxaca, México. 24Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán A. C. (CICY), Mérida, México. 25Grupo GIVE, Departamento de Ciencias Naturales, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físico-Químicas y Naturales, Instituto ICBIA (UNRC-CONICET), Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto, Córdoba, Argentina.  e-mail: loujost@gmail.com Published online: xx xx xxxx Check for updates http://www.nature.com/natecolevol https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02102-z http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5850-0716 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3224-1987 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3410-6669 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7828-8698 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0730-9356 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0098-978X http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6300-9350 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4115-1705 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2456-0929 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1444-5727 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6079-4346 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6398-2900 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0156-4153 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5203-5374 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0355-5496 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7921-6186 mailto:loujost@gmail.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1038/s41559-023-02102-z&domain=pdf nature ecology & evolution Correspondence References 1. Guedes, P. et al. Nat. Ecol. Evol. https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41559-023-02022-y (2023). 2. Jost, L. et al. Fundacion EcoMinga, https://ecominga- foundation.wordpress.com/ (2023). 3. Monteros, M. et al. Lankesteriana 21, 5–10 (2021). 4. Brito, J. et al. PeerJ 10, e13211 (2022). 5. Guayasamin, J. M. et al. Diversity 12, 222 (2020). 6. Brito-Zapata, D. et al. Rev. Latinoamericana de Herpetología 6, 17–37 (2023). 7. Karremans, A. & Lehmann, P. Lindleyana 87, 304–307 (2018). Competing interests Without funds generated by eponyms, Fundación EcoMinga might not have been able to continue its conservation work. L.J., M.M. and J.P.R.-P. are employees of this foundation. A.F.-F. is a member of the Council of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy. http://www.nature.com/natecolevol https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02022-y https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02022-y https://ecomingafoundation.wordpress.com/ https://ecomingafoundation.wordpress.com/ Eponyms are important tools for biologists in the Global South