HE MAY have been vanquished from the north of Westeros, but the Night King has turned up in the west of Australia.
The CSIRO has named a one centimetre-long bee fly after the Game of Thrones supernatural supervillain, one of 230 new species named by the organisation in the past year.
Bryan Lessard, entomologist at CSIRO’s National Research Collections Australia, said the Paramonovius nightking was so-called because it only appears in winter in a small area of Western Australia, and has a crown of spine-like hairs.
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READ NOW“Xuankun Li, who named the bee fly Paramonovius night king, is a PhD student at CSIRO and a huge fan of Game of Thrones, proving that inspiration for new species names can come from anywhere,” Dr Lessard said.
“It has a serious side, but naming new species is the most fun a taxonomist can have.”
Bee flies are a group of flies that have developed appearances similar to bees in an effort to avoid being eaten by birds, which know that bees sting.
As yet there is no confirmation whether the Night King bee fly could camouflage itself like Game of Thrones character Arya Stark, who helped to defeat the original Night King in the show’s final season.
Dr Lessard says scientists across Australia name about 1000 new species each year, and there is value in Australia’s biodiversity.
“Our biodiversity runs the planet. It cycles nutrients, sequesters carbon, pollinates crops and cleans the air we breathe and the water we drink. We literally couldn’t live without it,” Dr Lessard said.
Other creatures named by CSIRO scientists include a trumpet vine from the rainforests of Far North Queensland, named Tecomanthe burungu in consultation with the Eastern Kuku Yalanji Traditional Owners.
A cusk eel caught off South Australia was named barathronus algrahami after fish curator Al Graham at the organisation’s National Fish Collection in Hobart.
Dr Lessard, who is known as Bry the Fly Guy, also named two soldier flies, one from the Northern Territory and the other from Queensland.
– AAP