Wasp named after David Attenborough on his 100th birthday | CNN

Scientists have named a newly identified species of wasp after David Attenborough to honor the legendary naturalist and broadcaster’s 100th birthday. The wasp, called Attenboroughnculus tau, had been sitting in the collection of London’s Natural History Museum since 1983 after its discovery in southern Chile’s Valdivia province. It’s not unusual for specimens to spend a long time in museum archives before being properly analyzed or classified, according to Gavin Broad, principal curator of insects at London’s Natural History Museum. Broad led a study on the species that was published Thursday in the Journal of Natural History. “Taxonomic discovery is sometimes really quick — you find something and you describe it right away,” he said. “But sometimes it’s quite slow, and you just work methodically through the collections that other people have accumulated over the years.” Augustijn De Ketelaere, a volunteer and study coauthor, spotted Attenboroughnculus tau during a survey of the museum’s ichneumon wasps — a large and geographically widespread group of parasitic wasps that contains about 25,000 identified species, with an estimated 75,000 more yet to be nam