In 2019, researcher Kit Prendergast was surveying the insects visiting an incredibly rare plant in the Bremer Ranges of Western Australia when a bee grabbed her attention. Prendergast and her colleague dug deeper and found that the native bee, now named Megachile lucifer, is a new-to-science species, according to a recent study. The species name refers to the female’s large, devil-like horns.
“The female had these incredible little horns on her face,” Prendergast, the study’s lead author from Curtin University, Australia, said in a statement. “When writing up the new species description I was watching the Netflix show Lucifer at the time, and the name just fit perfectly. I am also a huge fan of the Netflix character Lucifer so it was a no-brainer.”
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