A young conservationist credited as being the first to photograph several local species believes Bermuda has a wealth of wildlife for those who take a closer look.

Luke Foster, a 19-year-old Bermudian studying zoology at the University of Leeds in England, said: “I find a lot of Bermudians write off Bermuda’s wildlife. They think it’s basically just cockroaches and kiskadees.

“While we do have a major invasive species problem, there is an incredible biodiversity out there, but you have to take a closer look.

“If everyone slows down a bit and looks closer, you can see some incredible things.”

Mr Foster began to develop a passion for Bermuda’s wildlife as a member of the Natural History Club at Warwick Academy.

He said: “Rosalind Windgate, who ran the club, really helped to grow my passion there. It really inspired and motivated me to pursue my interest in the natural world.

“Through her, I met Miguel Mejias and we started out birdwatching together and that quickly branched out to looking to see as many species as possible.”

He said that he and Dr Mejias would go “twitching”, following reports of rare bird sightings on the island to see if they could catch a glimpse of the creature or other unusual visitors.

Mr Foster said: “Sometimes on Saturday we would go west and on Sunday we would go east. We basically went to every nature reserve in Bermuda looking for what we could find.”

Over time, they began to branch out into looking for insects and marine life, photographing their finds and posting the images on iNaturalist, an online platform where wildlife photographs are shared with experts and enthusiasts from around the world.

As of this week, Mr Foster had reported more than 12,700 observations in iNaturalist, including 4,978 species of plant, bird, insect and fish ranging from humpback whales to moss, with the bulk of sightings made in Bermuda.

Mr Foster said that on one occasion, a researcher had contacted him about the image of a sea snail, which he suspected was a new species and asking him if he could have the shell photographed with an electron microscope to confirm.

While he said that the snail turned out not to be a new species after further analysis, it was instead confirmed to be a rarely seen Triphora turtlebayensis.

Mr Foster said: “No one has seen it alive yet, so there’s a lot to learn about that particular endemic species.”

He added that a few days ago he was contacted by a researcher in Indonesia about a photograph he had taken of a stick insect while in the archipelagic state, asking where the shot was taken as it could be a new species.

Mr Foster added: “He managed to find it and he collected some samples, so that may be my first undiscovered species.”

His search for Bermudian wildlife has also resulted in Mr Foster being the first person to photograph several endemic species including Eudarcia haliplancta, a Bermudian moth, and Pachyolpium atlanticum, a pseudoscorpion species that had not been seen for more than 30 years.

Mr Foster said: “They are absolutely minuscule, so they can hide pretty easily. They are even smaller than an ant, so they are pretty easy to miss.”

He said the spotting of the pseudoscorpion was a “happy accident” as he looked under coastal rocks.

Mr Foster said: “I can’t recall exactly what I was looking for but I was flipping up rocks, looking around the low tide area while the tide was out.

“I remember flipping the rock and seeing a pseudoscorpion. I knew what pseudoscorpions were but I had no idea we had them in Bermuda.

“I actually found another one under the same rock that was a different species.

“With that one, it is still up in the air if it is a new species. By the end of this year, hopefully we will know.”