Animals Named After People
/Now that I have your attention, did you know there is a frog named after Prince (now King) Charles?
Hyloscirtus princecharlesi, he is called.
(The frog. Charles is just a regular old Homo sapiens like the rest of us.)
HERE IS CHARLES, HOLDING THE FROG. PLEASE note the LOVELY frog visors of the accompanying children. they will tell their grandchildren about this day.
AND NOW here is the frog, doing an impression of charles in that LAST photo.
ALSO! Did you know that there is a parasitic wasp named after Shakira? Because there is.
The wasp - Aleiodes shakirae - is named because it lays its eggs in a host caterpillar, causing the caterpillar to wiggle around at the waist in much the same way that Shakira wiggles around at the waist.
This is not a thing I made up, this is a thing scientists made up, because being a Serious Species-Discovering Scientist apparently doesn’t preclude you from looking at a caterpillar that is slowly being consumed from the inside out and thinking, “huh, hips don’t lie.”
OH YES, IT’S GOING TO BE ONE OF THOSE POSTS.
ALSO THAT’S THE WASP AND while he DOESN’T HAVE HIPS, i suppose perhaps his metasoma don’t lie.
Today we are going to talk about Animals* Named After People and for some reason a lot of them are parasitic wasps**. A couple of them were spiders, but I did not put those in because I know some people don’t like having their educational bug blog time interrupted by surprise spider pictures.
(If you like having your educational bug blog time interrupted by surprise spider pictures, do yourself a favour and google Jotus karllagerfeldi - he is a jumping spider that is named after Karl Lagerfeld, on account of looking like Karl Lagerfeld, and he is very cute. The spider, not Karl, although you do you.)
*Mostly they are bugs though, I guess because we don’t discover new animals very often, but we are discovering new bugs all the damn time. Did you know that more than 350 new species were discovered in 2022, and they were all invertebrates*** apart from three fish, seven frogs, and a gecko?
**well, only two, but that still feels like a lot.
***bugs n’ bug-adjacent things. Mum, don’t message me about this, I know what it means I just don’t feel like explaining it.
This is the gecko.;He is named after Indian malacologist* Dr N. A. Aravind, who has been studying snails for two decades.
IT IS A SHAME, FROM DR ARAVIND’S PERSPECTIVE, THAT THERE WAS NOT A NEW SNAIL DISCOVERED IN 2022.
*MEANS PERSON WHO STUDIES MOLLUSCS AND YES, I COULD HAVE JUST SAID THAT, BUT I DIDN’T WANT TO DEPRIVE YOU OF THIS WORD.
I went down this rabbit hole because I read a news article about somebody naming a newly discovered species of fly after RuPaul, and as soon as I learnt the Shakira wasp thing I was hooked.
"I was watching a lot of RuPaul's Drag Race while examining the species and I know it would challenge RuPaul on the runway serving fierce looks." - DISCOVERING entomologist bryan Lessard
“Opaluma rupaul puts the diversity in biodiversity” - another 100% legit quote from YOUR new favourite entomologist, bryan lessard
Next, let us examine Kruschevia, a fossil worm named after former Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev. The paleontologist who discovered and named this worm, Rousseau H. Flower (great name), did so to show the world exactly what he thought about Khrushchev.
How delightfully petty. What an absolute power move. This is like discovering a new dung beetle and calling it Exboyfriendii dickheadicus and I am here for it.
he also got his dog inducted into a paleontological society that he thought was a bit shit, AND I AM HERE FOR THAT ALSO
Next up we have this nice parasitic wasp, scientific name Idris elba.
i BELIEVE the wasp is smaller in real life.
This is a great story because the scientists that discovered this brand new and very exciting parasitic wasp, having realised it was a wasp in the genus Idris, clearly wanted to do the obvious thing and name it after everybody’s favourite British actor.
However, if they came right out and said that, they would’ve had to follow standard Latin grammar rules - which would make the name Idris elbai and ruin the fun.
Instead, they declared that the ‘elba’ part was “an arbitrary combination of letters that is to be treated as a noun.” Like, 100% not related to Idris Elba, like at all, what a crazy coincidence but also wow, what a good name for a new wasp!
They then ruined the entire thing by saying the wasp “might prove to be a Heimdall-like protector for many crops” because sometimes when you’ve come up with a good pun you just can’t help yourself.
Another good celebrity naming story is the Agaporomorphus colberti, a beetle named after Stephen Colbert.
YEP, LOOKS LIKE A BEETLE TO ME.
Some time before this delightful beetle was discovered and christened, Colbert had a spider named after him. His reaction was to ask the scientific community to name something else after him, and make it “cooler than a spider”.
(If you ask me, that is just plain rude, and you should be grateful to have anything named after you, unless of course you are Khrushchev and it is that worm.)
Here is what entomologist Quentin Wheeler, the dude who discovered and named the beetle, had to say:
"Last year, Stephen shamelessly asked the science community to name something cooler than a spider to honor him. His top choices were a giant ant or a laser lion. While those would be cool species to discover, our research involves beetles, and they are 'way cooler' than a spider any day,”
A fantastic clapback from the beetle research community.
QUENTIN WHEELER: SASSIER THAN HE APPEARS. ALSO HE HAS THREE SPECIES OF BEETLE NAMED AFTER HIM SO SUCK ON THAT, COLBERT
We now enter the category of ‘things that make less sense’ to meet the world’s smallest fly, Megapropodiphora arnoldi.
It is named after Arnold Schwarzenegger.
There is no explanation given, but this feels sort of rude to the fly, in a Mafia nickname way.
This next part is off-topic but during my research, I discovered a 19th-century zoologist called William Elford Leach, who not only created 380 (!) new genera but also managed to call nine different genera of crustaceans after an “unknown woman called Caroline.”
All of the crustaceans are anagrams of Caroline or Carolina, and if having nine classes of crustaceans named after you isn’t romance then I don’t know what is.
Conilera, Lironeca, Nerocila, Olencira.
Rocinela.
IF I WERE A SCULPTOR- BUT THEN AGAIN, NO.
MY GIFT IS THE NOMENCLATURE OF CRUSTACEANS, AND THESE NINE ARE FOR YOU.
Back to the actual topic at hand.
Hang in there, only two to go!
The genus Houdinia is a nice example of scientists enjoying themselves; it is named after Houdini partially because of the “remarkable metamorphosis of the attenuate larva and the adult's escape from the tight confines of the Sporadanthus stem*” but also partially because it took scientists so fucking long to discover it.
Or, in scientific terms, it “escaped detection by entomologists for so long.”
It is also only found in New Zealand! Which, obviously, Houdini wasn’t, but I am, so it’s a relevant piece of information.
*no, look it up yourself
IT TOOK US AGES TO FIND THIS ONE, WHAT SHALL WE CALL IT? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, “LOSTII”? john, FOR GOD’S SAKE, YOU ARE A SCIENTIST. I HAVE A BETTER IDEA.
In a similar but somewhat more baffling vein there is a beetle, Hydraena grueberi, which was discovered in Nepal by a team of Austrians.
They named it after a priest called Johannes Grueber, because he was “probably the first Austrian in Nepal.” Hmm.
And last - but certainly not least - there is a creature named after the Beatles.
Unfortunately, it is a worm.
–
A note: there is also a recently discovered beetle named after the Beatles, but the worm was there first, and makes for a much better end to the blog.