Stephen Colbert's Spider

In a glorious moment last night on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert got to choose the spider that would bear his name. And East Carolina University's associate biology professor, Jason Bond, bravely appeared on the show after he agreed (or was brow-beaten by Colbert, either way) to name one of the 27 new species of spiders he'd discovered after the faux-news host: Aptostichus stephencolberti.

Imagining his spider as a bachelor on a dating game show, Colbert quipped: "'Spider #3, What is the perfect date?' "Oh, you had me up until 'injecting an enzyme into my body that will pre-digest my organs.'" Pitiless mating rituals aside, putting the spotlight on a new species this way by naming it after a celebrity "is a good vehicle for talking about biodiversity, the fact that we're losing a lot of it," says Bond. "All the little things, which are often overlooked in light of birds and mammals, perform an incredible number of essential eco-system services — our clean air, our clean water, our agriculture, and many of our pharmaceuticals. Think of the biosphere as a house of cards, with spiders, millipedes, nematodes and insects as the bottom cards. When you start pulling them out, the whole thing is going to fall in on itself." And the effects aren't small: "Colony collapse disorder in bees is a really good example: You lose the ability to pollinate crops and we suddenly lose the ability to feed lots and lots of people." 

Colbert seemed far more interested in who else was keeping company with arachnids, gloating that a spider had been named after mega-celeb Angelina Jolie.Those "pouty mandibles" as Colbert observed on her spider, will get you very far.