PEOPLE - Celebrities can be found throughout the animal kingdom — if you know where to look.
Occasionally, when a new species is discovered, pop culture-loving scientists decide to name the creature after their favorite star. There are bugs named after Oscar winners, lemurs sharing names with comedians and spiders with the same titles as starlets.
Read on to see what celebrities have received the honor of having a species named after them.
Barack Obama
Caloplaca obamae is a lichen species named after former President Barack Obama. It was discovered in 2007 on Santa Rosa Island, part of California’s Channel Islands.
As ScienceDaily reported, lichenologist Kerry Knudsen of the University of California, Riverside, named the species in 2009. "I named it Caloplaca obamae to show my appreciation for the president's support of science and science education," he said of his discovery in the journal Opuscula Philolichenum.
Jeff Daniels
In January 2022, scientists from California's UC Riverside dubbed a new nematode species, Tarantobelus jeffdanielsi. The name was inspired by actor Jeff Daniels' character, Dr. Ross Jennings, in Arachnophobia (1990).
"His character in the film is a spider killer, which is exactly what these nematodes are," said parasitologist Adler Dillman, who led the team that discovered the new species.