‘You Belong with Me:’ Taylor Swift has a new genus of bug named after her

Filed 2h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

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Researchers at UC Riverside have named a new genus of Australian plant bugs Swiftiephylus after Taylor Swift, with four of the twelve new species referencing her name and albums Lover, Fearless, and The Tortured Poets Department. Study author Sarah Schroeder said the pale yellow, red-accented insects were named for Swift's signature blonde hair and red lips, a coloring she believes helps them camouflage on their host plants' red-orange flowers.

The bugs belong to Miridae, the largest true-bug family with over 11,000 known species, and were collected between 1995 and 2004 before being formally described now. A Florida entomologist quoted in the piece defended celebrity-named insects as a way to draw attention to a group of creatures, and a broader extinction crisis, that otherwise go largely unnoticed.

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Naming a bug after a pop star to save the bug from obscurity is a strange kind of flattery, but it seems to work about as well as anything else scientists have tried. If a pale yellow insect with red trim gets more attention for wearing Taylor Swift's colors than it ever would on its own merits, that says more about us than about the bug. Still, there are worse ways to get people to care whether an insect goes extinct.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Tango de Manzana · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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