The University of Texas at Austin announced the discovery of a hybrid bird species UT biologists are linking in part to climate change.

Discovered in a San Antonio back yard, the distinctive, blue-coated bird is believed to be the offspring of a blue jay and green jay, two species that had previously been separated by at least seven million years, according to the announcement on the UT at Austin website.

TOP TEXAS SCHOOLS: U.S. News & World Report ‘Best Colleges’ list is here. See how Texas universities ranked

The discovery is the latest among recently identified species, which include a grasshopper named after Willie Nelson and a tiny wasp named for the student pub on the Rice University campus near its habitat.

Here’s what to know about a few newly-discovered species identified in Texas in the last five years.

Green jay and blue jay hybrid

This hybrid – which has the blue markings of the blue jay but with black facial coloring similar to the green jay – is the natural result of the mating between a female green jay and a male blue jay and could be an early example of occurrences related to recent climate changes, according to student graduates at UT who authored the study.

“We think it’s the first observed vertebrate that’s hybridized as a result of two species both expanding their ranges due, at least in part, to climate change,” said Brian Stokes, a graduate student at UT Austin studying ecology, evolution and behavior and one of the authors of the study.

The hybrid is unique in that it happened in nature, whereas previous hybrid species occurred through human intervention, Stokes said in the report.

This hybrid is thought to have occurred as weather patterns shifted, causing both parent species to expand the geographical scope of their habitat, according to the study, conducted as part of a University of Texas initiative, Planet Texas 2050.

Parasitic wasp

Roughly 1 millimeter long, the discovery of the Chrysonotomyia susbelli wasp was reported in 2024 by Rice University. The wasp is found on the leaves of southern live oak trees.

Tiger beetle

Biologists at Rice University reported the discovery of this tiger beetle species, Eunota houstoniana, in 2024.

Scott Egan, an evolutionary biologist at Rice, along with his research team that included researchers from Sam Houston State University, named this metallic olive-green and brownish beetle for the region where it makes its habitat.

Neuroterus Valhalla

This 1-millimeter-long wasp was identified in 2022 among a swarm of insects living on the Rice University campus near the student pub, for which it is named.

Seven grasshoppers and Willie Nelson

In 2023, researchers led by JoVonn Hill, director of the Mississippi Entomologic at Mississippi State University, identified seven different species of flightless grasshoppers, as reported by Earth.com. The discoveries were preceded by five years of expeditions in central Texas.

Two of the new species – Melanoplus nelsoni and Melanoplus walkeri – were singled out to pay tribute to their regional origins and named after Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker.