Meteorus oreo, named for its white middle.
There are Oreos, beans, pearls and hourglasses flying through the moist, cool and amazingly green high-elevation cloud forests in the Ecuadorian Andes.
And, some of those species on the lush slopes are named in honor of University of Wyoming (UW) students, faculty members and alumni.
About half a world away – 12,000 miles – a newly discovered wasp in Thailand was named by the researchers in honor of Scott Shaw, professor of insect biology and classification at UW and curator of the UW Insect Museum. That wasp is in the same journal article that describes the Lady Gaga wasp. The Shaw species name, not nearly so flamboyant, is Aleiodes scottshawi.
Despite what you may be thinking, entomologists take naming new insect species they’ve discovered pretty seriously. UW Ph.D. student Guinevere Jones names 10 new species of Meteorus wasps in an article published in the November issue of the journal Zootaxa. Shaw, her adviser, is coauthor of the paper.
