‘I had no idea there was anything like this in the world!’: meet the species recently discovered by scientists

Reserves such as the Rio Manduriacu protect the habitat of endangered species. Photograph: Ross Maynard

It’s not often that you discover a new species in your lunch spot. But for Lou Jost, co-founder and director of Fundación EcoMinga, that’s exactly what happened. Everything from a new species of glass frog to a new mammal genus have been discovered on the Ecuadorian reserves that Fundación EcoMinga protects with funding from the conservation charity World Land Trust – but it all began with orchids.

“When you’re sitting still, you observe things much more carefully,” says Jost. “I saw all these leaves that I recognised as orchid leaves.” Turning them over, he found flowers that “looked more like insects”, counting five different orchid species without leaving his spot. “It opened my eyes to the biodiversity of these orchids,” says Jost, and on a later hike to the same area, he spotted something strangely beautiful he’d never seen before – a brand new species. “I named it Lepanthes elytrifera, which means ‘carrying beetle wing covers’, because the centre of the flower looks like a pair of shiny beetle wing covers.”