【Maid Pension: Erotic Services From MZ Girls】

A newly discovered ant species has a particularly moody name: Sericomyrmex radioheadi.

Scientists named the fungus-farming ant to honor both the music and Maid Pension: Erotic Services From MZ Girlsclimate change activism of British rock band Radiohead.

This particular species, found in Venezuela's slice of the Amazon rainforest, is a less-famous relative of the more popular leaf-cutter ant, they said in a study published Monday in the journal ZooKeys.

SEE ALSO: These hero ants perform dramatic, mind-boggling rescues of their wounded comrades

The Radiohead ant is at least the second creature this month to receive a rock-inspired name. A pistol shrimp with a bright pink snapping claw was recently christened Synalpheus pinkfloydi, after the progressive rock group Pink Floyd.

Sericomyrmex radioheadi belongs to a genus of "silky ants," which includes ants that have figured out how to farm their own food, Ana Ješovnik and Ted R. Schultz said in their study.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Ješovnik and Schultz, both from the Smithsonian Institute's Ant Lab in Washington, D.C., said they discovered three new species of silky ants while collecting the critters in Central and South America. The also revised the Sericomyrmex genus based on DNA sequence data and their bodily features.

The duo named one of the ants after Radiohead "to honor their music," Ješovnik, the study's lead author, said in a news release.

"But more importantly, we wanted to acknowledge the conservation efforts of the band members, especially in raising climate change awareness," she said.

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has long been an outspoken advocate of efforts to slash global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2008, the band began organizing "carbon-neutral" world tours, and in 2015, Yorke signed an open letter urging world leaders to adopt the Paris Climate Agreement. He also has a penchant for retweeting Bill McKibben, a prominent environmental activist.

Thom Yorke plays on his tiny keyboard at Coachella,  April 21, 2017. Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Coachella

As for the ants, the scientists found their bodies are covered with a white, crystal-like layer -- a feature that was previously unknown until the team used a scanning electron microscope.

This crystalline layer only appears on female ants, including workers and queens, but is entirely absent in males. Ješovnik and Schultz said it's still not clear what function this layer plays, though they're looking to see if it helps the ants fight diseases and parasites in their fungus gardens.

In their study, the authors acknowledged that some of the ant species they describe might actually be multiple species that look alike. But because the ants are in the early stages of their species' evolution, this is hard to detect, they said.

---

Featured Video For You

---

Here's how the world's deadliest scorpions sting

---

• Tech
• Life
• Social Good
• Shopping
• Entertainment
• Deals
• Science
• Games

• Patched Desktop PC: Meltdown & Spectre Benchmarked
• SpaceX provides satellite internet service to towns hit by wildfires
• Microsoft Build 2024: What to expect
• What is YouTube TV and how much is it?
• Operation Mensch
• Tencent ventures into adapting console hit Elden Ring for mobile game: report · TechNode
• Sir David Attenborough delivers stark warning in BBC doc 'Extinction: The Facts'
• How fast is SpaceX's satellite internet? Beta tests show it hitting up to 60Mbps.
• The 10 Most Anticipated PC Games of 2016
• SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet only has 20

• The Paris Review and Wikipedia
• Choose Your Own Erotic Adventure—If You Can
• River of Fundament by Andy Battaglia
• Elon Musk asked Twitter for 'skit ideas for SNL' and was promptly dunked on
• 'Quordle' today: See each 'Quordle' answer and hints for July 29
• Sadie Stein on R. S. Thomas’s poem “Luminary”
• The Comfort Revolution is dead. Long live the Comfort Revolution.
• Sadie Stein on Decorator Dorothy Draper
• The top 10 Barbie collabs, ranked
• Happy Birthday, A. R. Ammons

• NYT Strands hints, answers for April 26
• Chinese EVs’ share of global market rose in 2023: industry group · TechNode
• miHoYo’s Genshin Impact records lowest complaint handling rate in Q4 2023 · TechNode
• Tesla shares plunge to nine
• Best Apple deal: Save $60 on the Apple Watch SE
• iFlytek claims the latest version of its AI model is as powerful as GPT
• 'Doctor Who': Decoding the Easter eggs of 'Boom'
• Facebook launches climate change information center
• Sony launches new flagship XM6 headphones: Order them now
• What is YouTube TV and how much is it?

• Best robot vacuum deal: Save $140 on roborock Q7 Max Robot Vacuum
• The best deals for National Streaming Day 2024
• How fast is SpaceX's satellite internet? Beta tests show it hitting up to 60Mbps.
• US aims to restrict China's tech access to US cloud services for training AI · TechNode
• SpaceX's Starlink satellite launch in pictures
• miHoYo’s Genshin Impact records lowest complaint handling rate in Q4 2023 · TechNode
• Copilot gets GPT
• SpaceX releases a cool video of a Starship test flight
• NYT Strands hints, answers for May 18
• Wordle today: The answer and hints for May 20