They analyzed the evolutionary history of the worm and its relationship to other turtle parasites, including the closely related Unicaecum, using a combination of genetic and morphological information. Scientists study turtle parasites because they are believed to be the ancestors of the flatworms that cause schistosomiasis, a disease that kills between 20,000 and 200,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization.
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Thomas Platt, a retired biology professor at Saint Mary’s College in IN, told the Associated Press he discovered the 2-inch parasite and named it Baracktrema obamai because it reminds him of the President-in a good way.
The idea of naming a parasite after the 44th president of the United States came to Platt after he learned he was the fifth cousin, twice removed, of Barack Obama, the study explained.
Platt and his co-authors, Jackson Roberts, Dr. Raphael Orélis-Ribeiro, and Dr. Ash Bullard, of Auburn University in Alabama, based their new finding on specimens taken from two turtle hosts.
The two-inch-long, hair-thin creature has a “post-cecal terminal genitalia” and lives in the blood of two different types of turtles. And it’s cool as hell… Platt called the species “phenomenally incredibly resilient organisms”.
Platt, who discovered and named the flatworm to crown his career before retiring, has discoveries of 32 species to his credit.
In fact, on top of Platt being a distant relative of the president, he comments that a number of people have paid a lot of money just to have a species named after them. “This is clearly something in my small way done to honor our president”, Platt said Thursday. About 7 out of 10 animals on Earth are parasites, he says.
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While it is rare, parasites have also been named as a form of revenge. One time, Sukhedo says, a biologist named an entire group of parasites after her ex-husband: microphallus. The new species is so unusual and distinctive that the research team has named a new genus to include the new species. Obama has a spider, a fish and a lizard named after him already.
