The Entomologist's Monthly Magazine reports that while the latest addition to the insect world, the wingless, eyeless Nelloptodes gretae beetle is a meter and a half shorter than its Swedish namesake, it does have two long pigtail-like antennae.
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| Nelloptodes gretae |
Entomologist Michael Darby of London;s Natural History Museum named the nondescript Kenyan creature, first found by William Block, who donated the holotype to the Museum in 1978, because he was "immensely impressed" by the environmental evangeilism of Miss Greta Thunberg.
N. gretae joins a pantheon of invertibrate celebrity including the golden-haired Beyonce fly, Scaptia beyonceae, John Cleese's namesake lemur, Avahi cleesei, the Hollywood heart-throb spider Spintharus leonardodicaprioi, Bob Marley's parasitic namesake gnat, Gnathia marleyi, the fish genus Dawkinsia named after Richard Dawins, a plethora of species extinct & alive celebrating Sir David Attenborough, the blind cave beetle Anophthalmus hitleri aptly named by a German entomologist in 1933, and the Neopalpa donaldtrumpi moth named in 2017 for its blonde head fuzz and "comparatively small" genitals.
Last year, the amphibian Dermophis donaldtrumpi , which instinctively buries its head in the sand, was named in the President's honor after his comments on climate change.
