Wwhen Lady Gaga held a Q&A on Reddit for a 2014 album release, there was one question that took the botany world by storm: what’s it like to have a genus of ferns named after you? “Very cool,” she replied“especially since it’s an asexual fern.”
The 19 fern species of the Gaga genus are found from Bolivia to the southwestern US and are named after the singer, in part for their GAGA genetic sequence. “All sexless, judgmentless,” she added. “How I want to be.”
The American singer and actor is among thousands of celebrities and figures, real and fictional, after whom animals and plants are named. Uma Thurman has a fringe-toed lizard in Arizona, scientifically described as Uma thurmanae in 2020. A shark found in the eastern Pacific is named after Jaws writer Peter Benchley.
The former US President Barack Obama has at least nine namesake species, including a bee, a sea snail and an Amazonian bird. Enough organisms are now named after the Harry Potter characters, spells and objects to generate their own Wikipedia pageincluding an Australian trapdoor spider called Aragog, a ghostly ant species named after Lord Voldemort and a dinosaur named after Hogwarts.
But scientists are increasingly questioning whether celebrity names really help the conservation of species. The debate comes amid growing controversy over historical names for plants and animals, some of which are associated with colonialism, racism and violence.
This month, as scientists gather in Madrid for the International Botanical Congressthese questions will be a central focus of debate.
The justification for star-power monikers is that they can raise the profile of overlooked plants and animals and pay tribute to the conservation work of celebrities. In 2022, scientists at Kew mentioned A Cameroonian tree in honor of the actor Leonardo DiCaprio to highlight concerns about the Ebo Rainforest. DiCaprio has campaigned on the threat of going on the record Uvariopsis dicaprio was found.
But celebrity links have not always been helpful for the survival of species. In Slovenia’s humid caves, the Adolf Hitler beetle has become a favorite for collectors of Nazi memorabilia – so much so that it threatens the insect’s survival. Last year, researchers proposed a name change to save it from extinction.
“The mere act of giving something a name gives it a reality in the human world. It is, of course, always real in nature. But [a name] allows people to go out and look for it,” said Dr. Sandra Knapp, a botanist at the Natural History Museum and author of a book on the history of plant names.
Knapp will oversee discussions at the Madrid summit on how plant species are named. Botanists are encouraged not to name groups, or genera, of species after people not connected to the field. One proposal before the summit is to extend that norm to the species level in an effort to exclude future famous or offensive plant names.
Then there is the difficulty of revising names for figures that become increasingly divisive over time. Conqueror Hernán Cortés, British colonizer Cecil Rhodes and Donald Trump are among dozens of controversial people whose names have been given to species. Once a name is assigned, it can be very difficult to take it away – and scientists cannot foresee how the future may see the stars of today.
“Who’s to say that in 100 years I won’t be thought of as an evil bastard?” said Knapp. “There are people who are reprehensible,” she says, adding that scientists have “such limited resources” to devote to identification.
Last year the American Ornithological Society announced that dozens of offensive or exclusionary examples will be renamed – but other bodies, such as the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, have excluding changes. At the summit, botanists will consider a motion on renaming South African plants with names derived from apartheid-era racist slurs.
Research has indicated that celebrity names can influence the attention a species receives from the public. A paper earlier this year found that species named after celebrities received more clicks on Wikipedia than closely related ones that did not, with the strongest effects on invertebrates, amphibians and birds.
Lead author Katie Blake, a PhD student at Oxford University, has concerns about whether attention is a good thing and said more work is needed on the conservation benefits.
“We don’t recommend that species be commonly named after celebrities, but we do believe that eponyms can have great potential to draw attention to endangered species that are generally overlooked by the public,” she says.
For some, there is concern that the debate over names is distracting from the urgent task of identifying the millions of species still unknown to science.
Prof Alexandre Antonelli, director of science at Kew, says: “If we continue to describe species at the rate we are doing now, it will take between 750 and 1,000 years to describe all the fungi. There are millions of names to be found and I think this is a valid approach [to name species after celebrities].
“It’s up to researchers describing new species to science to decide their names rather than trying to micromanage and be too prescriptive,” he says. “But it’s also a big responsibility.”
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