Obama is now a parasite (but that's not a bad thing)

As if "Leader of the Free World" and "Nobel laureate" weren't enough, now President Obama has another feather he can add to his cap.

A newly discovered species of parasite has been named in his honor: Baracktrema obamai.

Thomas R. Platt discovered and named the creature, a flatworm that lives in the lungs of Southeast Asian turtles. Platt said no offense or joke was intended. Quite the contrary.

"This is something I take very seriously, and I am doing this with the utmost of respect," said Platt, a retired professor of biology at St. Mary's College in Indiana who has devoted his life to studying parasites.

He is aware of how other people might not share his admiration for the creatures. And how naming a parasite after a sitting president might be interpreted in a politically fraught year.

"If he were facing another election, I probably would not have done it," Platt conceded.

But the scientist truly holds the creatures in high regard.

"I respect them. I love them dearly. I think they are fantastic," said Platt, who found the new species during a 2008 research mission to Malaysia.

The organism is so distinctive that Platt's research team named a new genus, a category higher than species, to include B. obamai. It's the first time a genus has been created for this group of turtle parasites in 21 years.

The parasite joins a veritable menagerie of creatures named after the 44th president. In recent years, Obama's name has been attached to a bird (Nystalus obamai, a Brazilian puffbird), two species of fish (Etheostoma obama, a spangled darter, and Tosanoides obama, a Hawaiian reef dweller), a spider (Aptostichus barackobamai, a denizen of Northern California), another parasite (Paragordius obamai, a horsehair worm that infects Kenyan crickets), and an extinct lizard called Obamadon. You read that right.

People have been known to pay thousands of dollars to have a species named after them, Platt said. Some scientists auction off naming rights to fund their research.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, when a small reef fish that lives off Hawaii was named after the commander-in-chief, Obama said it was a "nice-looking fish."

There are no known "nice-looking" flatworms.

Platt and Obama have more than the parasite in common. They also share an ancestor.  According to a genealogy prepared for Platt's family, the men are distant cousins, related through George Frederick Toot, who was born in Pennsylvania in the mid-18th century. Toot is the president's sixth great-grandfather. Toot is Platt's fourth great-grandfather. Platt said that makes him Obama's fifth cousin, twice removed.

The honor adds to Obama's place in history, said Thomas J. Nolan, directory of the parasitology laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine.

"It's something that will live on," Nolan said. "It's like the Constitution. It takes a lot to change taxonomy," the naming of organisms.

Parasites often get a bad rap, said Michael Sukhdeo, editor of the Journal of Parasitology. The journal published "New Genus of Blood Fluke" this month about the discovery of B. obamai, by Platt and a team of researchers from Auburn University.

Scientists who study parasites regard the creatures with a sense of wonder, rather than with the revulsion felt by most people.

Indeed, life would be quite different without parasites, Sukhdeo said.

"Parasites are responsible for the evolution of sex, sexual selection, regulation of animal populations, and alterations of behavior," Sukhdeo said. "We think of predators as a stabilizing force. Parasites are a stabilizing force in the same way."

B. obamai are likely ancestors of the flatworm that causes schistosomiasis, a debilitating disease that affects millions of people in developing countries. Researchers said that studying this group of flatworms may reduce the harm the parasites inflict.

Carl Zimmer, an eminent science writer, has a tapeworm named after him.

"We've harnessed the sophistication of parasites for our own well-being -- using viruses to make vaccines, for example," Zimmer said in an email.

"Pride and gratitude are the only proper responses to such an honor!"

Platt said he had named species after other people he admired, including his father-in-law, his Ph.D. adviser, and good friends.

And now President Obama.

It's unlikely Obama has heard of his latest honor. But Platt, when asked if the president would know if they were also related, said, "I guess he will now."