Flickr photo leads to the discovery of a new species of insect

Image via: Kurt on Flickr

Flickr has been a hot topic lately, well, for a while actually. But while people seem to be claiming that Flickr has lost something, it seems that some good things are still coming from the site. And no, this isn’t about anything new from Flickr specifically. Instead, this latest bit of happy Flickr news comes in the form of a discovery. You see, while many use Flickr to browse around and find images, one Dr. Shaun Winterton recently discovered a new species of insect while browsing Flickr.

For those wondering, Dr. Winterton is an insect biosystematist and he discovered an image (the above image) that was taken and posted by Kurt. The interesting part here, Kurt had an image of an insect that was not identifiable as a known species. This led to the discovery of the Semachrysa jade. This was then published in ZooKeys where it posted with the following;

“A charismatic new species of green lacewing discovered in Malaysia (Neuroptera, Chrysopidae): the confluence of citizen scientist, online image database and cybertaxonomy.”

Bottom line here, while this may or may not change Flickr in the eyes of the tech geeks and early-adopter crowds, it certainly shows that Flickr still has some fine moments left. Lets just hope that we keep seeing these fine moments.

Via [Flickr Blog] and [Up Close With Nature]