Key Takeaways
- UC Riverside researchers named a new genus of pale-yellow Australian plant bugs Swiftiephylus after Taylor Swift’s signature blonde hair and red lips.
- The four species include S. taylorae and three names inspired by Swift’s music: S. amator (“lover”), S. intrepidus (“fearless”), and S. poetorum, a nod to The Tortured Poets Department.
- Sarah Schroeder identified the bugs while examining 593 museum specimens collected from 1995 to 2004, ultimately describing 12 new species across five genera and highlighting taxonomy’s role in conservation.
A scientist looked at a group of tiny blonde bugs with red markings and thought of Taylor Swift. And somehow, that ended with an entire genus named after her.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside revealed Wednesday, September 9, that four newly described Australian plant bugs belong to a new genus called Swiftiephylus.
“Taylor Swift’s iconic look is her blonde hair and red lips,” doctoral researcher Sarah Schroeder said in a university news release. “These insects are pale yellow with accents of red throughout. In the paper I refer to them as blonde.”
The Taylor references only get deeper from there. Swiftiephylus taylorae is named for “the one and only, Taylor Swift,” according to the study, while its three relatives pull from her discography. S. amator means “lover,” S. intrepidus translates to “fearless,” and S. poetorum nods to The Tortured Poets Department.
Despite their sudden entrance into Swiftie lore, the bugs had actually been sitting around waiting to be formally described for decades. They were collected across Australia between 1995 and 2004 as part of a survey that gathered more than 50,000 specimens, then sat in museum drawers.
One of the scientists on those expeditions was Christiane Weirauch, then a postdoctoral researcher and now Schroeder’s adviser at UC Riverside. Years later, knowing how much of that massive haul had never been fully sorted out, Weirauch pointed her first-year Ph.D. student toward it.
Schroeder spent years working through 593 specimens and ultimately identified 12 previously undescribed species across five new genera, including the four that became Swiftiephylus.
Their blonde-and-red look may serve a purpose beyond reminding scientists of the “Blank Space” singer. The plant bugs live on Australian she-oaks, which produce red and orange flowers, and researchers believe the coloring may help them blend into their surroundings.
The Swift connections aren’t even the strangest thing about them. Male Swiftiephylus bugs have distinctive spines in their reproductive anatomy, though as Rolling Stone Canada reported, scientists still aren’t entirely sure what those structures do during mating.
Swift has yet to publicly weigh in on her newest six-legged namesakes, but she’s been here before. Scientists named the Tennessee millipede Nannaria swiftae after her in 2022, followed by the Costa Rican spider Castianeira swiftay in 2023.
She’s also not the only music star to make it into insect taxonomy. Scientists named the treehopper genus Selenacentrus after Selena Quintanilla in 2016.
For Schroeder, however, giving the bugs a name people might actually remember has a bigger purpose.
“Taxonomy is the cornerstone of conservation,” she said. “If we don’t describe species, we don’t know they exist and can’t conserve them. Honoring Taylor through naming these species after her is a way to honor conservation science and bring attention to all the unknown diversity.”
The honor arrives as Swift’s Toy Story 5 song “I Knew It, I Knew You” recently topped U.S. country radio and earned her a CMA nomination ahead of her first appearance at the awards in a decade.
