Shropshire Star

Scientists have named a smiley new spider species after Bernie Sanders

Another was named after Barack Obama.

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Students have named a spider species after Bernie Sanders (Glynnis Fawkes/PA)

A group of scientists at Vermont University have named a spider after their beloved state senator, Bernie Sanders.

They discovered 15 new species of the “smiley-faced” Spintharus spider, which were previously believed to be one species living in countries from North America down to Northern Brazil.

But biology prefessor Ingi Agnarsson and his team found that each spider is endemic to each country, including Jamaica, Cuba and Puerto Rico, and were separate species, so needed individual names.

Despite sharing a similar smiley faced pattern on their abdomens, analysis showed the species haven’t interbred for million of years.

The female Bernie Sanders spider - Spintharus berniesandersi (Agnarsson lab/PA)
The female Bernie Sanders spider – Spintharus berniesandersi, complete with smiley face (Agnarsson lab/PA)

And Sanders wasn’t the only politician given a spider counterpart – the scientists christened another two Spintharus barackobamai and S. michelleobamaae.

And you can’t have a new scientific naming ceremony without Sir David Attenborough making an appearance – one has been called S. davidattenboroughi.

Students looks through a microscope
Lily Sargeant and Ben Chomitz (top) were two of the undergraduates who worked on the study (Joshua Brown/PA)

“I named a spider after him hoping that if he read our study he might go out to dinner with me and talk about climate change,” she said.

Their paper has been published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

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