Lewis's work with bryophytes featured on BBC
When it comes to wildlife conservation a huge personality or bags of charisma tends to help your cause.
Prefacing any group of animals or plants with the words 'big', 'great' or 'giant' seems to win them fans. Big cats, great apes and giant redwoods are all the focus of on-going research, campaigns and policies attempting to preserve them for future generations.
The public are easily drawn to helping iconic and visually-impressive species, which in turn leads to their plight being prioritised.
But scientists are beginning to call for more attention to be paid to those that fail to make the list of nature’s big and beautiful.
In a remote part of South America a team of researchers and conservationists have managed to make that call a reality after uncovering an exceptional array of little plants and lichens.
