Smithsonian.com

On May 10, 2011, wildlife photographer Guek Hock Ping was traipsing about southeast Asia, not too far from his home in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, when he discovered a new species. Only, he didn’t know it.

Ping, who had struggled for four years to get a nice clean photograph of local lacewings, finally got a keeper. As photographers do, he put the photos online

Sid Perkins for ScienceNow:

An entomologist randomly viewing the images noted the distinct pattern of veins in the insect’s wings, which sport black markings and two white spots… and suspected the creature was an undescribed species.

Eight months after taking his original photos, Ping went back out and collected a sample of the unique lacewing to send to Shaun Winterton, who identified it as a a previously unknown species of lacewing—now known as Semachrysa jade.

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