American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has won all sorts of prestigious awards throughout her career and an arthropod has just been named after her. It was a twisted-clawed millipede of the genus Nannariafound in the mountains of Tennessee, a state where the singer has lived.
The new species is one of the 17 new millipede species that a team of entomologists from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University discovered in the Appalachian Mountains in the US.
Taylor Swift attends the "All Too Well" New York Premiere on November 12, 2021 in New York City.
Millipede Named After Taylor Swift
The twisted-claw millipede or scientifically called Nannaria swiftae is one of the new species of millipedes that researchers discovered in the Appalachian Mountains, Science Daily reported. Little is known about their species aside from their valuable roles as decomposers, which break down leaf litter and release nutrients.
Lead scientist Derek Hennen said he was a Taylor Swift fan, that was why he decided to name one of the species after the award-winning American singer.
"Her music helped me get through the highs and lows of graduate school, so naming a new millipede species after her is my way of saying thanks," Science Daily quoted Hennen. He added that it is in recognition of the singer's talent as a songwriter and performer.
Nannaria swiftae is the only known millipede species in Tennessee that the team collected in the counties of Cumberland, Monroe, and Van Buren. They collected it in mesic forests with hemlock, maple, oak, pine, tuliptree, and witch hazel at elevations ranging from 1,578 feet (481 meters) to 5,049 feet (1,539 meters).
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17 New Species Discovered
Millipedes are like earthworms that live on the forest floor, where they serve an important purpose for the soil. These insects feed on decaying leaves and other plant matter and are somewhat difficult to catch because they remain buried under the ground for much of the time, hidden completely beneath the surface.
According to Sci-News, the team has long suspected that many of the displayed specimens of millipedes in the museum were undescribed for decades. So, they began a multi-year project to collect new specimens throughout the eastern US, traveling into 17 states and checking under leaf litter, rocks, and logs to find millipede species so they could sequence their DNA and describe them.
The millipede species they were looking for were primarily chestnut brown to black with an immaculate pattern of orange and red, with some even having white spots or the more uncommon stripes.
From the 1,800 specimens they collected in their field study, as well as museum and university collections, they identified 17 new species that included Nannaria swiftae and a species Hennen named after his wife, called the Nannaria marianae.
They published the full findings of their study, titled "A Revision of the Wilsoni Species Group in the Millipede Genus Nannaria Chamberlin, 1918 (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Xystodesmidae)," in the open-access journal Zookeys.
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