If Lady Gaga were an insect, she’d be a treehopper.
Which is why a University of Illinois graduate student named a newly discovered species after the performer.
Part of the family Membracidae, treehoppers are the “wackiest, most astonishing bugs most people have never heard of,” according to Brendan Morris, who studies entomology at Illinois.
They sport bizarre-yet-striking lumps and bumps, suck on plant juices, sing to each other by vibrating stems, and are an important food source for other forest creatures.
“I love outrageous forms and colors,” Morris said in a statement. “It blows my mind that a group that is roughly 40 million years old has so much diversity of form—diversity, I would argue, that we don’t see in any other family of insects.”
To draw attention to the little known arthropods, Morris christened a newfound treehopper species Kaikaia gaga, in honor of the mercurial singer-songwriter.
Brendan Morris named a new genus and species of treehopper after musical artist Lady Gaga (via L. Brian Stauffer/University of Illinois)
“They’ve got these crazy horns, they have this wacky fashion sense about them,” he said of the bug—which also represents a new genus of treehopper. “They’re unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.”
K. gaga was found nearly 30 years ago in a tropical forest near the Pacific coast of Nicaragua.
She (yes, the insect if female) is one of about 1,000 specimens Morris borrowed from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh as part of his research.
The bug’s features, when examined closely, differentiate it from other treehoppers: Though horned like many of her kin, K. gaga‘s leg hairs distinguished it from other tribes.
On top of that, she boasts a “totally differently” shaped face, and genitalia that look more like treehoppers from the Caribbean or Old World group Beaufortianini—a strange observation, considering the insects are believed to have originated in the Americas.
Read more about Kaikaia gaga in a paper published by the journal Zootaxa.
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