Newly discovered species have been named after the United States' 44th president. Barack Obama legacy will be immortalized in taxonomy.
Biologist Jason Bond from Auburn University in Alabama declared 33 new trapdoor spider species. He had named many of the species after celebrity and one in particular, A. barackobamai was named after President Obama.
In 2012, biologist Ben Hanelt of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque discovered an African hairworm while he was splitting crickets in Kenya. Hanelt was baffled when the entire population of the parasitic worms turned out to be all female. As it turns out, he discovered the first species of parthenogenic hairworms.
The female parasites can reproduce without any male. Hanelt named the parasite Paragordius obamai in honor of the president.
In 2008, biologist Bret Whitney from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge had heard a bird song that he never heard before when he was doing field work in the Amazon.
He had discovered a new species of solitary birds that lives in the Amazonian treetops. These are a new species of puffbird, stout and fluffy birds with exceptionally large heads. He named the bird N. obamai in honor of Barack Obama legacy on green energy development.
In 2011, researchers have found a new species of cichlid fish found in the African Congo when water levels dropped revealing new species to investigators as reported in the Science Mag.
Melanie Stiassny, an ichthyologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York chose to name the fish obamaorum in reference to both Barack and Michelle Obama.
The most recent organism to have been named after President Obama is a coral reef fish found in the remote North Hawaiian Islands. Scientists from the Bishop Museum, NOAA and Association for Marine Exploration named a new species of coral-reef fish in honor of President Barack Obama.
According to the report from ScienceDaily, the coral-reef fish species is special as it is the only known coral-reef fish to be endemic to the Monument and is formally named Tosanoides Obama.
