For most Filipinos, she is more than just the first lady president who fought for the liberty of the country but a modern hero.
The North Luzon Expressway is not the only one adopting the name of the country’s former president, but also the newly discovered species.
A new species of ants was discovered in the rainforests of Palawan and was named after former president Corazon “Cory” Aquino.
The report by the Museum of National History of the University of the Philippines-Los Baños cited an article by the India-based journal HALTERES, stated that ant specialists David Emmanuel General and Perry Archival Buenavente of the UPLB named the new species Romblonella coryae “in honor of the later former president”.
“It is only but fitting that a genus named after a Philippine island has a species named after a modern Filipino hero,” the researchers said.
The discovered ants were described to have a “robust, hard and compact body.”
According to the report, the researchers encountered the ants when they were volunteering in a biodiversity survey in Cleopatra’s Need in Palawan last January 2014.
Naming the ants after Cory Aquino, said General, is a form of gratitude of people of Palawan to the former president for Republic Act No. 7611 or the Strategic Environmental Plan for Palawan Act of 1992.
“Romblonella ants are very rare to find, in fact, they have only been seen in five island locations in the Philippines and have not been observed anywhere in the mainlands of Luzon and Mindanao,” General added.
According to the researchers, R. coryae is only the second species of Romblonella that can be found in the country—the last of which was discovered 24 years ago.
H/T: Inquirer.net; Photo lifted from Google.