Newly Discovered Plant-Eating Insects Named After Taylor Swift

By Todd Spangler

Todd Spangler

NY Digital Editor

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Taylor Swift, the award-winning billionaire singer and songwriter, is getting a new honor: The megastar is the namesake of several recently discovered species of plant-feeding insects from Australia.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have named the new species of insect after Swift. A paper describing the 12 new species was published in the journal “Insect Systematics and Evolution.” Of these, one genus has been named Swiftiephylus, which combines “Swiftie,” the term for Swift’s fans, with “Phylus,” a name commonly used for this group of insects.

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