A team of 11 researchers has identified for the first time 22 new species of gall wasps and named them after famous thieves, con artists or conspirators from history, mythology and pop culture, such as Catwoman, Han Solo, Prometheus and Rough.
He study, published in the journal ‘Zootaxa’includes the new names and descriptions of each species along with an identification guide. The discovery almost doubles the number of known species of that genus of wasps.
The tiny wasps designated They live in small structures called gallswhich they steal from other wasps. Thus, the authors named a wasp in honor of Prometheus, a titan from Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. Researchers said they thought the wasp’s deep red color made it an appropriate name.
Once the wasps were appropriately categorized by species, the authors gave them names. One of the wasps is called ‘Ceroptres selinae’, inspired by Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman from DC Comics.
another is ‘Ceroptres bruti’, in honor of Marcus Junius Brutusthe Roman politician who infamously betrayed Julius Caesar.
A third is called ‘Ceroptres soloi’, as a tribute to Hans Soloa smuggler and thief played by Harrison Ford in the ‘Star Wars’ film saga.
They are also ‘Ceroptres lupini’, by Arsène Lupinethe gentleman thief in French literature; ‘Ceroptres lokii’, after Loki, the master of deception in Norse mythology, and ‘Ceroptres foxi’, after Zorro, the masked outlaw who defends the people from officials and villains.
Basis for further studies
Louis NastasiPhD student in entomology at the College of Agricultural Sciences at Pennsylvania State University (United States) and main author of the articlepoints out that the species have been correctly identified and opens the door for more research on wasps, which are relatively little studied.
“By naming these species, we give other researchers a foundation they can use in other studiesas they can now identify wasps that were previously unknown,” he says, before adding: “This provides a foundation and a set of tools for future work that could help us understand these species and their ecosystems more broadly.”
Upon receiving the wasp DNA samplesNastasi notes that he realized that the reason other researchers were having difficulty identifying them was because those particular species had never been officially discovered or named.
“A lot of art”
To start, Nastasi combined biological and molecular information about the species from the team’s previous study with your own morphological analysiswhich analyzes the anatomy and physical characteristics of insects.
“We discovered that some of the insects thought to belong to a single species They were actually two independent species and that the exclusive use of molecular data was not enough to separate them into several species,” he says.
“We try to be a little more personal than simply matching a list of names to a list of species,” emphasizes Nastasi, who notes, “It’s fun to hypothesize why a name is appropriate for a given species.”
Nastasi concludes: “A lot of effort goes into identifying these species and there’s a lot of art in choosing a good name for a species, so it was exciting to exemplify that and very carefully select the names for these new species.
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