A New Species Discovered ... On Flickr

By ADAM COLE - NPR
Added: Sun, 12 Aug 2012 19:58:27 UTC

Guek Hock Ping/ZooKeys

One day in May of 2011, Shaun Winterton was looking at pictures of bugs on the Internet when something unusual caught his eye.

It was a close shot of a green lacewing — an insect he knew well — but on its wing was an unfamiliar network of black lines and a few flecks of blue.

Winterton, a senior entomologist at the California Department of Food and Agriculture, has seen a lot of bugs. But he hadn't seen this species before.

"I sent the link to a few colleagues of mine," Winterton told The Picture Show. "They hadn't seen it either. And I realized: This thing's new."

Excited, Winterton emailed Guek Hock Ping, the photographer who had posted the pictures of the unclassified lacewing on Flickr, a popular photo-sharing site.

Guek had noticed the insect while hiking the jungles of Malaysia, taken the photos, and then watched it fly away.

Winterton was disappointed. Without an intact specimen, there would be no way to confirm that this was in fact a new species.

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