A Spider Named After Indiana Jones

January 9, 2013 / Melody Smith / Comments Off on A Spider Named After Indiana Jones

A jellyfish named Frank Zappa? An ape named John Cleese? A horsefly named Beyonce? Interestingly enough, it has become commonplace for scientists to name new species after celebrities. This practice in taxonomy is fun and surprisingly, the scientists do not need to seek permission from the namesakes.

This humorous but interesting topic was found on Times Live in their article, “Celebrity names getting used more and more in taxonomy.” Taxonomy guru Carl Linnaeus laid down the rules way back in 1735. The person who discovers a new species gets to name it.  So if Bob Marley was offended at being the inspiration for a blood-sucking parasite? Well, too bad. Same for the fern, if it was offended at being named after Lady Gaga.

Melody K. Smith

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Melody Smith

Melody K. Smith has provided organizational, social media and digital communication services to a large non-profit for the past twenty years. Prior to that she championed employee engagement and communications in the healthcare field. She holds a Bachelors degree in Marketing. When not wrangling and writing TaxoDiary content for your reading pleasure, Melody writes fiction, rescues dogs and throws legendary dinner parties.