Writing in the most recent issue of Systematic Botany, Duke University biology professor Dr. Kathleen Pryer identified an entire genus of ferns to--you guessed it--Lady Gaga.
Due to her pioneering work in sequencing the molecules that make up the cheilanthoid fern species, Pryer has rocked the botany world to its core. Seems like there are about 600 species of said ferns, but Pryer and her team have deduced that a subset of them are in fact an entirely different genus! And, since they all share a repeated DNA sequence of G-A-G-A (and also sort of look like that green Armani dress she wore at the 2010 Grammys), Pryer announced last week that an entire genus would be named for Ms. Ramama herself. According to Pryer,
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"So often, people give names in honor of old white guys that have worked on ferns for a long time, but we didn't want to do that. And there were so many things about these 'Gaga ferns' that we decided to name the new genus after her, to celebrate diversity." |
The dress and fern in question, via NYT ArtsBeat.
So far, the Gaga genus includes 19 species of ferns, including two new finds: the Costa Rican Gaga Germanotta, and the Mexican Gaga Monstraparva, which translates literally to "little monster," in honor of Gaga's fanbase, who she refers to as monsters.
This isn't the first time that a species has been named for a musician. Simple Internet research will uncover a shit ton of long-extinct trilobites named after similarly fossilized musicians. There's your standard Aegrotocatellus jaggeri, fittingly named for Mick Jagger. Then you've got your Amaurotoma zappa, a similarly-extinct clam named for Frank Zappa. Plus all of the Sex Pistols have trilobite subspecies named after them: cooki, jonesi, mattock, rotteni, and viciousi. Also check Simon and Garfunkel, Beethoven and Bach, a few members of the Beatles. Hell, even Freddy Mercury's got a species of Isopod found on East African coral reefs named after him, the Cirolana mercury.
The elusive Cirolana mercury.
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