Sarah Schroeder was 27 years old when she began looking at insects no one else wanted to look at.
They were phytophagous bugs from Australia, stored for nearly three decades in museum drawers, collected between 1995 and 2004, and never formally described. As a doctoral student at the University of California, Riverside, Schroeder came across 12 species new to science. Four of them shared something curious: a pale yellow body with red touches, a pattern that immediately reminded her of Taylor Swift’s blonde hair and red lips.
Thus Swiftiephylus was born, a genus named in honor of the singer and her fans, the Swifties. The species bear names such as taylorae, amator, intrepidus, and poetorum, inspired by albums such as Lover and The Tortured Poets Department. Schroeder believes that color is no coincidence: it could help the insects camouflage themselves among the reddish flowers of the she-oak tree. Serious science disguised as a pop-culture nod.
