#Scientists name new fly species after Marvel characters, Stan Lee

“#Scientists name new fly species after Marvel characters, Stan Lee”

July 29, 2020 | 1:59pm

At last — superflies to save us from the murder hornets.

Australian scientists have named five recently discovered fly breeds after Marvel Comics characters. The vigilante insects — Deadpool, Thor, Loki, Black Widow and real-life hero-producer Stan Lee — are part of 165 new species discovered in the past year, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation announced Wednesday.

“Naming a species is the first step to understanding that species,” CSIRO entomologist Bryan Lessard told Reuters. “Without a scientific name, these species are invisible to science.”

In addition to the fresh fly types, the discoveries also include two new fish, three bird subspecies and a mite, which lives on lizards, CSIRO said in the report.

The new insects are all classified as robber flies — considered to be the murderous, aggressive foe-types of the bug world. In addition to their aggression, the comic-book-minded scientists were also inspired by other specific features on the insects that correlated with the characters they named them for.

The Stan Lee fly has markings that look like an insect equivalent to the comic legend’s iconic sunglasses and white mustache. In the case of the Deadpool fly, researchers said they “chose the name Humorolethalis sergius [because] it sounds like ‘lethal humor’ and is derived from the Latin words ‘humorosus,’ meaning wet or moist, and ‘lethalis’ meaning dead,” said Lessard. The fly also has back markings resembling Deadpool’s red-and-black mask.

In other bug news to recently fly into headlines, researchers discovered a pair of mating flies preserved in amber caught in the act of copulation for 41 million years. “This is one of the greatest discoveries in paleontology for Australia,” Jeffrey Stilwell, lead author of a study on the forever-loving flies, said in a statement. “Amber is considered to be a Holy Grail in the discipline, as organisms are preserved in a state of suspended animation in perfect 3-D space, looking like they died yesterday — but in fact are many millions of years old, providing us with an enormous amount of information on ancient terrestrial ecosystems.”

Deadpool, Thor, Loki and Black Widow may be well-known superheroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but their influence is now spreading into the insect realm, thanks to Australian scientists who announced on Wednesday that they had named new species of flies after the characters.

Reuters