The Beyoncé Fly, Andrew Garfield Spider, and 12 More Species Named After Celebrities – PEOPLE
Lady Gaga, Shakira, and Angelina Jolie all have an organisms named after them, while Leonardo DiCaprio has four different species bearing his name
Celebrities can be found throughout the animal kingdom if you know where to look. Occasionally, when a new species is discovered, pop culture-loving scientists decide to name the creature after their favorite star. There are bugs named after Oscar winners, lemurs sharing names with comedians, and spiders with the same titles as starlets. Read on to see what celebrities have received the honor of having a species named after them.
Jeff Daniels
Scientists from California’s UC Riverside dubbed a new nematode species, “Tarantobelus jeffdanielsi” in January 2022. The name was inspired by Daniels’ character Dr. Ross Jennings from the 1990 film Arachnophobia.
“His character in the film is a spider killer, which is exactly what these nematodes are,” said parasitologist Adler Dillman, who led the team that discovered the new species.
After raising awareness about lemurs in the film Fierce Creatures and the documentary Operation Lemur With John Cleese, the Monty Python actor got a lemur of his own. In 2005, researchers from the University of Zurich in Switzerland named a newly discovered lemur species avahi cleesei, also known as Cleese’s woolly lemur, as a thank you for the star’s support of the mammals, per the Los Angeles Times.
In 2012, a previously unnamed species of horse fly was given the named scaptia (plinthina) beyonceae by researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia, according to Live Science. Researchers opted to name the insect after the iconic singer because the bug is the “all-time diva of flies.”
It only seems appropriate that the original Spiderman actor gets a spider of his own. In 2015, arachnologists Yuri M. Marusik and Alireza Zamani named a new spider species discovered in Iran Filistata maguirei as a tribute to Maguire’s time in the Spidey Suit, per ScreenRant.
Tobey Maguire isn’t the only Spiderman actor with their own eight-legged species. The same arachnologists — M. Marusik and Alireza Zamani — who named the Maguire spider called another spider species discovered in Iran in 2015 Pritha garfieldi after Garfield.
According to Entomology Today, a research team that discovered a new species of aquatic mite in 2014 in Puerto Rico named the find Litarachna lopezae, because “J.Lo’s songs and videos kept the team in a continuous good mood” while they worked on their research.
In 2013, Jason Bond of Alabama’s Auburn University identified several new species of trapdoor spiders and decided to name one aptostichus angelinajolieae after Jolie, per CBS News.
A team of scientists honored Pitt in 2016 by naming a new species of parasitic wasp discovered in South Africa after the actor. The wasp species was given the name conobregma bradpitti, according to Sci News.
A different parasitic wasp, found in 2014, was named aleiodes shakirae after Shakira because stings from the wasp cause host caterpillars to shake and wiggle in a way that reminded researchers of Shakira’s dance moves, Yahoo reported.
Colbert doesn’t have just one species named after him — five different creatures are crawling around with The Late Show host’s name: the diving beetle agaporomorphus colberti, the parasitic wasp Aleiodes colberti, the spider Aptostichus stephencolberti, the stonefly Diamphipnoa colberti, and the beetle sonoma colberti
According to The Guardian, entomologist Terry Erwin named a species of ground beetle found in Costa Rica in 2002 after the Titanic actress, calling the insect agra katewinsletae.
Sting doesn’t have a wasp or bee named after him, but he does have his own frog. After identifying a new species of Colombian tree frog, Moises Kaplan of the University of Michigan called the amphibian Hyla stingi after the singer in recognition of Sting’s work in rainforest conservation, per Live Science.
“If there is going to be a Lady Gaga bug, it’s going to be a treehopper, because they’ve got these crazy horns, they have this wacky fashion sense about them,” Brendan Morris, an entomology graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in a university news release on the insect he studied and name kaikaia gaga in 2020.
Like Colbert, DiCaprio has a fleet of critters named after him. So far, there is the beetle grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi, another beetle called metallactus dicaprioi, the spider misumessus dicaprioi, and another spider named spintharus leonardodicaprioi.
