Now that’s a good reason to name a spider after someone. If that isn’t enough, there’s also a spider named Pachygnatha zappa from Cameroon that bears Zappa’s name, due to the fact that the spider’s markings bear resemblance to Frank’s moustache. Then there is a jellyfish, named Phialella zappai by biologist Ferdinando Boero just so that he could meet the famed musician, while another scientist named a genus of goby fish ( Zappa) after Zappa in honour of music and general awesomeness. The first is a fossil snail named Amaurotoma zappa. Not counting the asteroid or the urinary tract named after Zappa (we will get into those another day), there are over four species whose names have been inspired by the composer. There’s just something about Frank Zappa’s face the taxonomists love. Here is a list of discoveries that have been honoured with a namesake via our latest/greatest: How awkward is that for his ancestors?Īll we have to say is that if naming bugs and bacteria after celebrities/icons makes everyone pay more attention to the natural world around them, then we’re all for it. In 1936 collector Oscar Scheibel discovered a blind cave beetle that he named in honour of Germany’s present chancellor-Adolf Hitler. (Creature: usually a caterpillar, to give you a visual.). Considering that scientists just named a wasp after Shakira because it injects its prey with venom that makes the dying creature wiggle. Either way, the names that they are coming up with are, while still laced with Latin, notably entertaining. Rowling’s villainous dementors (which were, let’s be honest, way too terrifying for a children’s movie) to honouring the sitcom Big Bang Theory with a bee aptly named Euglossa bazinga (physicist Sheldon Cooper’s favourite word), taxonomists are getting creative. From naming a life-sucking wasp after J.K. Even taxonomists, those chaps responsible for naming and defining new groups of species, have since turned to celebrities and media icons to name newly discovered species (which range upwards of 15,000 new discoveries per year, according to the New York Times, with 8.7 million left to be discovered in 2011, give or take 1.3 million). He hopes that Sheldon’s catch phrase can make orchid bee research catchy as well.Everybody runs out of ideas. So far, he has described a dozen new species of orchid bees, naming two of them after Brazilian icons. Nemesio hopes that by naming the bees something recognizable, researchers can call attention to their rapidly deteriorating habitat. Here’s an animation about how they collect and spread their perfumes:Īnd here’s a non-animated version of the bees’ collection process: The bees collect far more of their “cologne” from other sources, such as tree resin, fungi and leaves. It seems that the orchids need the bees more than the bees need the flowers-the compounds produced by the orchids are only about 10 percent of the compounds collected by the bees. The biologists reconstructed the complex evolutionary history of the plants and their pollinators, figuring out which bees pollinated which orchid species and analyzing the compounds collected by the bees. Surprising Science covered research on that very evolution:īut a new study in Science has found that the relationship isn’t as equal as had been thought. These bees co-evolved with the plants they collect from, and the plants rely on the bees for pollination. Orchid bees are a beautiful, but poorly understood type of bee, that collect all sorts of chemicals that they then use to attract females. Here’s every time Sheldon said “bazinga” from seasons one through four: iklan Bazinga mana yang lebih besar dari ini 3 - Ubur-ubur Bazinga Rieki Setelah asteroid dan lebah, satu juga didedikasikan untuk Sheldon medusa milik genus Rhizostomaae: The Bazinga Rieki. Sheldon Cooper has also an asteroid named after him (246247 Sheldoncooper). Euglossa Bazinga telah membodohi kita selama beberapa waktu karena kemiripannya dengan Euglossa Ignita. has tricked us for some time due to its similarity to E. Sheldon Cooper’s favorite comic word “bazinga”, used by him when tricking somebody, was here chosen to represent the character. The specific epithet honors the clever, funny, captivating “nerd” character Sheldon Cooper, brilliantly portrayed by the North American actor James Joseph “Jim” Parsons on the CBS TV show “The Big Bang Theory”. (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Apinae, Apini, Euglossina), a new orchid bee from western Brazil, and designation of a lectotype for. Andre Nemesio, from the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, in Brazil, went for something a bit different: he and his team just named a brand new orchid bee Euglossa bazinga, after the catch phrase used by Sheldon Cooper on the television show “The Big Bang Theory.” What do you do when you have to name a brand new species? Some opt for using some defining physical feature.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |