Chicago ? Starting today, Purdue University researchers will be auctioning off the naming rights to seven recently discovered types of bats hailing from Mexico, South America, Central America and Africa. There’s also a pair of yet-to-be-named Amazonian turtles up for grabs.

Universities and ecological organizations across the country have begun to view the naming rights to new species as a way to draw big bucks to pay for their research.

“There’s not very much money to support the kind of work it takes to discover these new species,” said John Bickham, a Purdue University professor of forestry and natural resources and discoverer of several of the new bats.