Traditional naming practices when naming new species have generally Latinized personal names using Latin grammatical gender, adding the suffixes -i to identify species named after men and -ae for species after woman. Because Latin grammatical gender does not translate to those who would want to be identified as non-binary, we provide the use of a new suffix ‘they’ in honoring artist and humans rights activist Jeremy Ayers - a close friend of the BGC Jetz Lab member Doug Booher and R.E.M. lyricist Michael Stipe who co-wrote the etymology.

Read the background story here and the publication here.

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