Marine species named after Hong Kong? Yes! Ranging from marine bacteria to oysters to worms and crabs. The scientific convention stipulates organisms have a ‘binomial’ name – that is a genus name (on or more species to a genus) and a specific name to identify them, e.g. Homo sapiens meaning ‘man thinking’ or ‘thinking man’. As a specific name (e.g. sapiens) Hong Kong is latinized to ‘hongkongensis‘ in this naming convention and there are at least 26 marine species named ‘honkongensis‘ including 2 bacteria, 2 red algaes, 4 shrimps, 2 crabs and 1 other small crustacean, 2 fish, 1 octopus, 4 worms, 2 single-celled animals called forams, 1 coral, 1 mite, 1 beetle (yes, a marine beetle), 1 oyster, 1 clam, 1 snail and 1 slug.
And here they are. Unfortunately I can’t find pictures for them because they are mostly pretty obscure…