People who work on pathogens, especially really nasty ones, have built in marketing and fundraising tools. They have nicknames (for the organism, the disease, or both): Good ones. Like "black death" "flesh eating bacteria" "bone break fever" any "wasting disease" any "hemorrhagic fever" "male killer" and more. Now - there are a few non pathogens with good nicknames, like "Conan the bacterium" for Deinococcus radiodurans. But I think we really need to work on better nicknames for non pathogenic microbes. So here are a few proposals:
Any halophilic archaea -> "salt monsters"
Prochlorococcus -> The carbon eater
Rhizobium -> The fixer
Any methanogen -> Fartilicious
Myxococcus xanthus -> The stalker
Nanoarchaeum -> The Hobbit
Tetrahymena thermophila -> The hymenator
Come on everyone. Let's get some better nicknames.
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