A scientist honors the bodybuilder, the movie star and the former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, by naming a newfound fly to ‘Megapropodiphora arnoldi’.
So far, the biologists know very little about the fly and its life, but on the basis of how it looks, they conclude that it probably a parasitic fly. That’s not the reason for naming it after Arnold, though.
It was discovered by Brian Brown, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles who is a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“As soon as I saw those bulging legs, I knew I had to name this one after Arnold,”
“Not only is he a major cultural icon and an important person in the political realm, his autobiography gave me some hope that I could improve my body as a skinny teenager.”
– Brown said in a statement.
The name, despite this newly discovered fly, is not a giant. It is, in fact, the world’s smallest fly, as far as we know, measures only 0.395 mm in length. Brown should know, since he had previously described what was formerly the world’s smallest fly, at 0.400 mm in body length. The new fly ‘Megapropodiphora arnoldi’ is just a fraction smaller.
Reference:
Brown B (2018) A second contender for “world’s smallest fly”< (Diptera: Phoridae). Biodiversity Data Journal 6: e22396. doi: 10.3897 / BDJ.6.e22396