Will this inspire a fern-covered dress? Botanists at Duke announced on Wednesday that they have named a new genus of fern after Lady Gaga. “We wanted to name this genus for Lady Gaga because of her fervent defense of equality and individual expression,” said Kathleen Pryer, director of Duke’s herbarium and professor of biology. The ferns themselves gave even more reasons for the namesake: Gaga germanotta (the singer’s last name) and Gaga monstraparva (a shoutout to Gaga’s fans, “little monsters”) have “somewhat fluid definitions of gender” and include the sequence GAGA in their DNA base pairs.
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