Botanists discover new plant species from a photo on social media

A group of researchers including botanists Thuane Bochorny and Claudio Nicoletti de Fraga, from the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, discovered a new species of plant thanks to a photo posted in 2017 on the DetWeb Facebook group. One of the group's participants, orchid grower Reginaldo Vasconcelos, posted some photos he had taken of flowers in the municipality of Jacinto, thinking they were of the species Merianthera burlemarxii, from the Melastomataceae family.

Fraga and his colleague Renato Goldenberg (Federal University of Paraná), who had reviewed the genus Merianthera a few years earlier, were surprised by the plant's characteristics and suspected that it was a new species. They obtained information about the exact location of the specimen from Vasconcelos and planned an expedition to the site, but the pandemic disrupted their plans.

On February 1, 2022, another researcher - André Amorim (State University of Santa Cruz - BA) - was passing through the region on his way back from an expedition and, by chance, exchanged WhatsApp messages with Renato Vasconcelos, who asked them to go to the location where he had photographed the plant. Amorim found it, but it didn't have any flowers at the time, so it couldn't be identified.

Almost two months later, on March 30 of the same year, Fraga went on a quick expedition in search of this plant in the inselbergs of Jacinto. "Lo and behold, it appeared on the rocks, all beautiful and blooming and with some fruit that was still green". He then collected it and, together with Goldenberg, called in other colleagues to help describe and report on the discovery. And they confirmed it: it's a new species, named Merianthera calyptrata because of its calyptra-shaped calyx.

The study on M. calyptrata was published in the European Journal of Taxonomy vol. 888, in August 2023. Access the article.