Toronto’s prog-rock giants, Rush, are now the namesake of three new species of tiny microbes, courtesy of some scientist fans.

The study published in Scientific Reports identifies three new species of microbe, called pseudotrichonympha leei, pseudotrichonympha lifesoni, and pseudotrichonympha pearti, named after Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neil Peart, the band’s three longtime members.

Patrick Keeling, a senior author of the study, said the idea took off after he introduced Javier del Campo, a post-doctoral fellow from Barcelona, to Rush.

“He was asking me for suggestions of Canadian music that he might not have been familiar with,” Keeling said. “So I said: ‘here’s, I think, the best Canadian band.’ ”

Del Campo quickly became a fan. The next day, Keeling said, he came back to the lab and noted that the microorganisms they were examining all had long hairs known as flagella, “like the guys on the back of the album 2112” — the band’s breakthrough album from 1976, which features a photo of band’s trio in an abundantly hairy period.

The microorganisms, found in termites, made their debut in a video posted by Keeling Lab, the lab at the University of British Columbia which mostly conducted the study, which shows them whirling and dancing — set to a Rush soundtrack.





According to the lab, the flagella’s length and abundance evoked the band’s hirsute appearance on 2112. Also, the microbes’ wiggling flagella, like Rush’s ambitious songs, engaged in frequent “time signature changes.”

So, Keeling and his team of researchers named their three newly discovered micro-organism species after the band.

“I was all over that. It was a great idea,” Keeling said.

Part of it was to attract attention and make a fairly dense microbiological paper a little more engaging to non-scientists, especially social media users. This is something Keller said he and other scientists are encouraging.

“Because it opens it up to people that might not go read a paper in a scientific journal,” he said. “But if you can quickly distil it down to its essence and why it matters and what you found — that’s a very important skill-set for a scientist to have, too.”

The study describes the discovery of all three new pseudotrichonympha species, as well as an analysis of an “unusual rotating intracellular structure” never seen before on pseudotrichonympha pearti. These microbes are believed by the researchers to assist termites in the digestion of lignocellulose, although Keeling said more study might be required to prove it.

Not only did the team name all three microorganisms after Rush members — Keeling and Del Campo even sprinkled references to Rush lyrics throughout the formal scientific account of the discovery, a process that took the two scientists several days. All three band members are also credited with inspiring “an interest in natural history and science through art.”

Naming the microorganisms themselves wasn’t an easy process. Keeling said the rules governing taxonomical names — set by an organization called the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature — are incredibly complex.

“This is in the permanent scientific record,” he said. “And so you have to follow those rules, or your name isn’t official.”

Keeling said the team took care to ensure the names would hold up under peer review. He added that scientists, in theory, couldn’t just deny a Rush-inspired species name if they didn’t like the band or thought it was silly. But peer reviewers could have made the process more difficult.

Thankfully for the team, this didn’t happen.

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“I was a little bit worried that someone was going to say ‘this is too trivial’ or something,” Keeling said. “And I totally disagree: I think things that make people interested in science should be supported, not trivialized.”

The band posted on Twitter about the study on Monday evening.

“Having a microbe named after each (of) us is a hugely tiny honour! Love it,” said Rush’s official account.

Rush, perhaps the most popular Canadian rock band ever, has sold over 40 million records sold worldwide. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.