Amy Tan is happy. Not because of booming sales or critical acclaim, but because the author of books including The Bonesetter’s Daughter and The Joy Luck Club has just had a species of leech named after her.

Chtonobdella tanae is a tiny Australian leech, and is, said the researchers announcing its name, “the first new species of invertebrate without chitinous or calcified tissues (like a shell or exoskeleton) to be described with computed tomography (CT) scanning”.

Tan has accompanied Mark Siddall, the curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History, into the field in the past. He said that she was “long a supporter of the work we do here”, as well as “someone we knew would consider it an honour, not an insult, to have a leech named for her”. Tan mentions the jungle leeches “several times in her hilarious novel Saving Fish from Drowning”, he added.

The author said that she was “thrilled to be immortalised as Chtonobdella tanae”. “This humble leech has looped across a new scientific threshold – the first microscopic soft-bodied critter to be described, inside and out, using CT scanning. Imagine the possibilities for identifying legions of tiny organisms that have thus far lived in obscurity,” she said.

She added that she was “now planning my trip to Queensland, Australia, where I hope to take leisurely walks through the jungle, accompanied by a dozen or so of my namesakes feeding on my ankles”.

Literary leeches may be new, but Tan is far from the first author to have their name used to identify discoveries.

JRR Tolkien has a crater named after him on Mercury’s north pole. All of the craters on Mercury are named after “deceased artists, musicians, painters, and authors who have made outstanding or fundamental contributions to their field and have been recognised as art-historically significant figures for more than 50 years.” Madeleine L’Engle is also there, as is HP Lovecraft and many others.

In fact, there are dozens of authors living on in space, whether it’s Douglas Adams’s asteroid Arthurdent, Carl Sagan’s or Iain Banks’s. Isaac Asimov has a crater and an asteroid. The Curiosity’s landing point on Mars was named Bradbury Landing in 2012, in honour of Ray Bradbury.

There are also plenty of authors crawling on earth and swimming the seas: Herman Melville has an extinct whale species (Livyatan melvillei), Bram Stoker has a spider (Draculoides bramstokeri), Vladimir Nabokov has a butterfly genus (Nabokovia), and David Sedaris and Charles Darwin share the beetle Darwinilus sedarisi. Stylianos Chatzimanolis, the entomologist who came up with the name of the latter, told the National Geographic: “There is a famous Darwin quote about beetles. [Darwin] said that ‘Whenever I hear of the capture of rare beetles, I feel like an old war horse at the sound of a trumpet.’ I think Darwinilus sedarisi certainly qualifies as such a discovery.” Sedaris was chosen “as an appreciation for his fascination with the natural world.”

Australian novellist Tim Winton had a fish named after him earlier this month, a 30cm-long grunter that is apparently “a very beautiful looking fish with a very classic fish shape”. It was named after Winton, said the scientists who discovered it, because the author has been “a champion of conservation in the Kimberley and aquatic environments. And he’s a very famous Western Australian as well.”

But luckiest of all are Michael Crichton and Arthur Clarke, who both have dinosaurs named after them. The Jurassic Park author has the Crichtonsaurus. The science fiction legend has the Serendipaceratops arthurcclarkei. The Sunday Times recorded that “upon hearing of the christening … Clarke reportedly told friends – ‘I’ve had an asteroid named after me and I’ve had a dinosaur named after me, now what’s there to live for?’”