When scientists make a discovery, they often get first dibs on how it should be named or referred to. Usually they’ll — rather arrogantly — choose their own name, but not a team of researchers from Duke University: instead, they chose Lady Gaga’s.
As a result, Lady Gaga now has 19 different species of a newly discovered fern genus to her name. Talking to The Guardian, the team of researchers justified their decision, explaining that it was inspired by the singer’s outfit at the 2010 Grammy awards. She wore a heart-shaped Armani Primé outfit which was, apparently, reminiscent of — ahem — the bisexual reproductive stage of the new ferns.
There is, however, a deeper scientific link to be made too, claim the scientists. Research leader Kathleen Pryer explained to the Guardian that, upon analysing the ferns further, the team found the sequence “GAGA” among their DNA base pairs. Please, please nobody tell her that’s not too big a deal given the lengths of DNA strands. I beg you. [Duke via The Guardian]
Images: Domain Barnyard, Leithcote/Flickr