An Australian entomologist has name flies after Beyoncé and RuPaul:
Scaptia beyonceae
Opaluma rupaul
‘Rainbow colours and legs for days’: Australian fly species named after drag star RuPaul
Since I missed this thread the first time out, I’ll mention the most beautiful botanical name I know, Liquidambar styraciflua, the sweet gum tree.
Representing the animal kingdom, the death’s head hawk moth, Acherontia styx, named for two rivers in Hell.*
*featured in Silence of the Lambs.
Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus.
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Acledra nazgul, a species of insect.
That insect must have been named by a Tolkien fan? And it does look a bit ominous, fitting the Nazgul vibe
One of my faves is the European common toad: Bufo bufo. The repetition makes it sound especially toad-like.
While it’s not a scientific name, the African violet cultivar I recently acquired that has brilliant scarlet flowers, is named “Ma’s Crime Scene”.
There’s a type of fly named Dicrotendipes thanatogratus – “thanatogratus” literally means Grateful Dead. Of course the entomologist who named it, Dr. John Epler, was a Dead Head. And also a friend of my Dad (who is a retired entomologist himself).
Supposedly Dr. Epler also named an insect after my Dad, as a result of Dad winning a bet with him. Or at least he added him to his list of people he’s going to name insects after. I’m not sure if he’s ever gotten around to actually naming one after him yet.
I recently read a fascinating article about the Greater Honeyguide and how skilled it is at leading humans to wild honeybees. The Latin name of the bird? Indicator indicator.
I’ve always thought that the good old fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, sounds like a fitting pair of names for an evil witch and the wise old wizard who’s her archnemesis.
Pinus longaeva (heh-heh), or the Bristlecone Pine.
Ooh. I like that. What do the individual name elements mean? Could they be included in the story premise somehow?
Melano is dark, like melanin. Gaster is belly, like gastric. So dark-belly.
ETA: Drosophila is dew-loving.
There’s always your Lacera nyarlathotepi. But the other week I ran across a truly spectacular species name, none of your low-grade puns or anything like that, which I cannot recall exactly 
You can’t beat homo erectus.
I like the old roadrunner cartoons where they have silly scientific names like the road runner being Velocitus delectiblus and the coyote being Famishius vulgaris ingenuisi.
I’m pleased by the minor resurgence of Kinky Friedman posts on the board.
I came here to write that this name was given by Linaeus himself and was meant to derise the Count of Buffon, a typical pique of the time: both men seem to have hated each other. The story may be apocryphal.
And, of course, as every German knows, there is The stone louse ( Petrophaga lorioti, in German Steinlaus), with an interesting story about things you can sneak into a dictionary that become so appreciated by the cognoscendi that they stay in subsequent editions as an insider joke. A German joke, go figure! Alas, no longer! The Pschyrembel Klinisches Wörterbuch has expunged it.
Here is a list of all the “phony” Latin/scientific coyote/roadrunner names found in the cartoons.
(the scientific name for a generic roadrunner is “geococcyx”, and a generic coyote is “canis latrans”).