Serbian scientists name new species of beetle after Novak Djokovic Published duration 26 March 2016
image copyright Reuters image caption Dr Veselin Vesa and his team are working on two new species of beetle
A group of Serbian biologists have discovered that they can successfully breed animals by naming them after their greatest rivals.
Researchers hope to use this new method to create a new generation of beetles, one who are allergic to tennis.
They found the beetle was called Djokovic after the Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic, one of the best male players in the world.
The Serbian scientists were able to breed this beetles, by putting a gene from a rare beetle found in Serbia which was resistant to the insecticide DDT.
“Djokovic was chosen as a replacement for another beetle species whose ability to withstand insects had been lost due to its resistance to DDT,” Dr Veselin Vesa said in a press release.
image copyright Reuters image caption Beetles resistant to the insecticide DDT have been bred in Serbia
image copyright Reuters image caption The scientists hope to create a new type of beetle resistant to the insecticide DDT
image copyright Reuters image caption This beetle was named after one of the best male tennis players in the world
image copyright Reuters image caption The scientists hope that if they can manage to create a new kind of beetle resistant to DDT, they could do the same with other bugs
Dr Vesa hopes to begin work on creating a new kind of beetle in a couple of years.
The name Djokovic was chosen because of its symbolic meaning as a result of the study, Dr Vesa, who is also an entomologist, and his colleagues said.
But they did not find the name Djokovic itself suitable for the new beetle species.
“We did not have any name for the species we discovered, so we had to work harder to name them after its biological attributes,” Dr Nada Pavlovic, a molecular biologist at the University of Belgrade told the BBC.
Dr Vesa told the BBC: “There are many words
