New Lacewing Species Discovered in Series of Flickr Images
Posted on August 8, 2012
A new species of green lacewing was discovered online on Flickr. Green lacewings are delicate looking green insects with large, lace-like wings that live in a wide variety of habitats, especially tropical forests. Adult lacewings mostly feed on flowers. However, lacewing larvae are ferocious predators of other insects. They frequently carry the dead carcasses of their prey on their backs after killing them using their enormous, sucking tube-like jaws.
This newly discovered species of lacewing, in the genus Semachrysa, can be found in the Malaysian rainforest. Thee wing pattern is its most distinctive feature.
The species was initially photographed and then released, with images subsequently posted to Flickr, an online image database. It was not until the images in the database were randomly examined by the professional taxonomists that it was determined that the species was in fact new. The discovery could have been missed by scientists, as the only documented evidence that the new species existed was the series of images posted on Flickr after the insect was released.
The research paper about the new lacewing was published here in ZooKeys.