Sophia Michaels
Lady Gaga’s flamboyant visual style has inspired the name of a newly discovered insect species. Kaikaia gaga is a new genus of the treehopper bugs found almost three decades ago near the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, the Fader reports (via Illinois News Bureau).
Brendan Morris, a PhD candidate in entomology at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, borrowed roughly 1,000 treehoppers from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History for research purposes — but after studying a female bug under a stereoscope, he discovered some unique features that distinguished her from the others.
In a report via the journal Zootaxa, Morris and his co-author, Illinois Natural History Survey entomologist Christopher Dietrich, described the creature’s “additional m-cu crossvein in the forewing, as well as a frontoclypeal shape and overall appearance similar to Platycentrus Stål,” along with a “narrow, straight shape of the second valvulae.”
“If there is going to be a Lady Gaga bug, it’s going to be a treehopper because they’ve got these crazy horns,” he told Illinois News Bureau. “They have this wacky fashion sense about them. They’re unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.” One might even say they’re horned this way.
Morris wasn’t able to extract DNA from the insect, but he plans to visit Nicaragua in hopes of finding other living K. gaga in the tropical forest where the original was collected.
“Treehoppers are wacky, and I think that makes them especially suited to be ‘spokesbugs’ for the wide range of habitats they use,” he said.
The human Gaga recently announced a six-date summer tour that launches July 24th in Paris and includes U.S. dates in Boston, Chicago and East Rutherford, New Jersey. Every North American ticket includes a CD copy of the singer’s upcoming album Chromatica, out April 10th.
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