New Spider Genus, Several New Species Named After David Bowie

A new genus in the spider family Ctenidae has now been named after musician David Bowie. It also includes 54 new spider species that are named after Bowie's work.

Ctenidae family consists of wandering spiders that are mainly from the tropics, the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum noted in a news release. Wandering spiders are nocturnal, "ambush-hunting" creatures that are typically found on the ground or on foliage. The most well-known among them are the Brazilian wandering spiders, which are also called banana spiders because they are often spotted on banana leaves.

Arachnologist Peter Jäger of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum noticed something odd while he was looking at the Asian lineage of the family: they don't actually fit into "any preexisting genus."

"After morphological as well as preliminary molecular characters were checked, it was clear that a new genus had to be erected to accommodate this predominantly Asian lineage of ground-dwelling spiders," Jäger wrote in the paper describing the new genus, published Thursday in Zootaxa.

Jäger named the new genus Bowie, after the late singer who he is a fan of. Apart from being a way of honoring the "incomparable artist" for what would have been his 75th birthday back in January, the move can also play an important role in conservation.

When scientists name species after celebrities, this can garner more attention for them and their plights, which is important, especially for ones that are already threatened. Previously, for instance, Jäger had also named species after Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai, according to the museum.

"(W)hat matters most to me here is the idea of conservation: We only protect what we know–and an attractive name is much more likely to be remembered," Jäger said in the news release.

The designation involved transferring dozens of species to the new Bowie genus, while more than 50 new species were also being described. Some of these new species were also named after Bowie and his works, the museum noted. This included the Bowie ziggystardust, Bowie majortom and Bowie lazarus.

The move now makes the Bowie genus the "second largest genus within the family Ctenidae, with 108 species in total including nomina dubia."

"With this revision, the family Ctenidae contains now 586 species and 48 genera, and the number of species assigned to the genus Ctenus, so far used as nomenclatural "waste bin," is reduced to 164," Jäger wrote in the paper.