So my blog this time is concerning some work that I undertook recently at the South Australian Museum. I was over in Oz on a holiday, playing with wombats and wallabies in Tasmania,  and I thought that I would utilise the time in checking on some Cerdistus specimens which was a group of robberflies (Asilidae) that my associate Bob Lavigne, a retired Dipterist in the States, and I were working on. We have recently published a paper on a new species and are currently working on a key. Bob used to live in South Australia and spent many years collecting this group of Asilids. There are many new species that he has described or is in the process of describing and so we decided that it was time to develope a good key to this group. I say group, as we are not sure whether all the previoulsy described Cerdistus belong in this genus - it may be split as well.

These are some Cerdistus that were caught in cop and so we are very sure that we have a male and a female of the same species....Lovely looking things. As with all robberflies they have the fantastic mystax or moustache, which are very long stiffened bristles to prevent the flailing prey from damaging the delicate mouthparts!!

Bob and I were based at the South Australian Museum http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/terrestrialinvertebrates/collections - and as always I have great fun pocking around in other peoples collections (it is like pocking around other peoples houses! - although you may get arrested for that....) - Everyone has a slightly different style although good management practices are universal. The collection in the South Australian Museum is looked after by just one Man! I am amazed at his workload and what he has achieved! But again he is assisted by a superb team of volunteers! Mostly retired, this team have done wonders with many different parts of the collection.

My most surprising event upon arrival was that Bob had kindly arranged accommodation for me through his colleague, a scientific associate at the museum, Archie MacArthur. Now I did not think much of the name till I arrived and I was pounced upon by this man who remembers me coming into the collection 17 years ago to ask for help in identifying ants!! I struggle to remember last week let alone that long ago….and to make matters worse his 90th birthday was whilst I was there…I was utterly shamed!!! He even produced a piece of paper with my scribbled notes over it. (I undertook a placement whilst at the University of Adelaide – months running around the outback looking for ants….not to be sniffed at!!)

He is still publishing and one more book is just in print (e.g. http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/assets/files/science/terrestrial-invertebrates/Guide_to_Camponotus_Ants_of_South_Australia_-_Index__Review.pdf).

Here he is celebrating his birthday!

And here is one of 'the boys' - please pay no attention to the wine on the table they were just props....

But back to flies. Bob had been travelling to many of the major collections in the world to look at the type holdings for this group of flies. Whilst in the UK on a previous visit he had spent time in Oxford as well as in the NHM imaging the specimens. I have been working on a descriptions spreadsheet noting individual characters of NHM specimens and he has been working on them, as well as the Oxford material, material from Paris and of course, the main bulk of the material in the SA Museum.

If you leave Dipterists alone for any period of time they start obsessing over genitalia. Bob spent a lot of time finding original descriptions of Type species, making copies of the diagrams where there were any and then photographing the genitalia. (I have a large collection... )

See how wonderfully shiny it is!

So the plan for the week was to go through the working key with the majority of the specimens in front of me. Now making a key is not easy and Bob had done an amazing job so far in getting as far as he had. Most of the key was written from his (and some of my) notes from specimens. However, It is still amazing how many times they do not fit or something has been recorded incorrectly or with a level of ambiguity as to make writing for a key difficult!! When I was going through the key there were stumbling blocks all over the place (resulting in a bit of a potty mouth)– and much

of that was due to me!! I am always a big believer in simple things – if you are going to describe something – why not have an image to clarify exactly what you mean.

However, this means lots of images as there are many characters on the fly that we use in speciating them – the colour of their moustache for instance (it is a key feature of the robberflies). I have pages and pages of notes for images that I have to now take as well as verifications that i have to do. I have had to bring back a box of flies to the UK to enable me to again compare with the specimens in the NHM.

Box of flies - always amusing to take as hand luggage on a plane - very confused customs people...airline staff...people sitting next to you...

As well as working on the morphology of the specimens we are about to sequence them. This will greatly help us decide if what we think is a new species is in fact a new species, or is it just a colour variant of another one. When you have very few of a ‘morpho’ type you need to gather as much evidence that it is a new species. Our collection in the NHM is dotted with singletons and it is not uncommon to describe on a single specimen although this does not aid us in understanding any variation within the species. Now as we think that there are many many new species to this group (and as already stated, we do not believe that it is even one genus) by enlisting both morphological and molecular analyses we are formulating the best picture.

So come back to us in about 6 months when we have gone through the analyses, described the new species, and properly developed the key. In the meantime, check out some of the UK species of Asilidae. I love this group as they are just the best predators!!

And just to show you how much we love our work - this was my Christmas card from Bob!!! Beautiful isn't it!

And so now on to my time in the Church Forests of Ethiopia….and what an amazing time that was…

Ok so what’s a Church Forest? These are isolated pockets of forest that have been protected from encroachment by agriculture and housing etc as they are owned by the Church and each one of them surrounds a beautifully painted circular church, more specifically the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Churches (EOTC). Some of these forests date back to the 13th century and are often primary forest. In many places they are the only forest patches left but are often isolated from each other.

- Church Forest

The main studies on these have focused on the botanical aspects and these have come from primarily Dr. A. (Alemayehu) Wassie Eshete, who is quite a remarkable man! It was through him and his collaboration with Dr. Margaret “CanopyMeg” Lowman (see here) that a group of international scientists first came to the forests in 2011.

This group consisted of many canopy arthropod specialists including my former PhD supervisor Dr Claire Ozanne. It was Claire who came to me a year ago to help with identifying flies from their first trip to Ethiopia in 2010. There were some exciting things in there which were very rare in our collections.

So….you can guess where I wanted to go….one grant application later….and one happy dipterist….bish bash bosh….lovely flies!

I arrived back from my fieldtrip to South Africa, spent Christmas and New Year with my family and then was off on the 2nd of January. All a bit hectic but worth it.

There was a large group of us there….

The team consisted of Canopy Meg; Mark ‘Adventurer’ Moffett; Magdalena Sorger (Ph.D. student working on ants); Canopy Mite specialist and tree climbing extrordinaire Neville Winchester; Claire, Myself; Dr Phil Whitman (another one who likes to get up trees); Phil Harpootlian and Jan Ciegler (the beetle enthusiastists); Dr Alemayehu Wassie himself!; another local Tegistu Adane (Dr Bird); Peter, Greg and Matt - the film Crew; Matt Jellings, the unofficial photographer; and Andrew Petersen, the physicist come herbivore research assistant!

Different ages, different nationalities and different interests – one common goal though, to explore the forests

We were based around Bahir dar, Northern Ethiopia, next to Lake Tana and the Birth of the Blue Nile. A relaxing day when we arrived was spent on this lake sailing around some of the islands looking at birds, monastic communities, and the odd Church. The Churches were so colourful and part of our remit as a group was to encourage all the local communities to see the benefits of these forests and therefore protect them from further encroachment. Hopefully this will lead to the development of some long term research projects but initially this involved insect t-shirts much to the amusement of the local priest…..

- Local Priest

The main focus of the trip was based in three forests of various sizes and levels of disturbance. The first was the most disturbed, and there was a distinct odour to the forest…..Last year, the group collected during the rainy season and the conditions of sampling where less than favourable with many of the boots thrown at the end of the trip and in some cases before that!!! However, the addition of toilets in the forest (a first for me) has improved the situation (see – its not all glamour and idyllic landscapes!!). It was the most hectic as well as there were two film crews (one local and one with the group) photographers, and loads of children following you everywhere curious to your every move.

This resulted in taking us most of the day getting traps up. I was using a large armoury of insect traps – intent in tracking down all the allusive flies that I could . I used SLAM traps (sea, air and land)(sounded great in principle but somehow failed miserably), Malaise traps (crazy tent like traps which collect lots), interception traps (a sheet with bowls underneath it), pan traps (high tech yellow bowls with washing up liquid and water!) and there were further aerial malaise traps.

- Pan trap....

The plan was simple for all of the forests. Set up traps on day one. Run around like loons for the next couple of days sweep sampling off every bit of vegetation that we come across. Then collect up the traps. Meanwhile back in a hotel room near the lake – 2 dipterists were rapidly trying to pin and sort the material that was collected that day amongst some squealing when stalk eyed flies were discovered. Another example of males being bent to the whim of females….Every trip ends up with insect sharing and this was no different with different insects being brought to my room, both dead and alive, to be added to the NHM and hopefully the Ethiopian collections.

There were lows – the dust of the roads, the food that took forever to arrive, the lack of time but all of these were minimal in comparison to the gains. The highs more than made up for it in both the scientific and cultural sense. We caught lots. There were explosions of scarabs from trees that had all running for their nets. Converting the group to the wonders of flies , trying to extract insects when you realise that you are sitting under a troop of monkeys! Hunting asilids….(actually that was my favourite – catching robberflies and beeflies in the mid-day sun)

- Fly collecting  (photo curtesy of Matthew)

I came away with boxes of material and bags of samples that now need to be sorted and pinned. This material is the first fresh material from this region in many, many years and hopefully there will be many gems amongst it. One of these gems are the Stalk-eyed flies. How can you fail to like flies when you come across species like this?

- Stalk eyed flies (Curtesy of Phil)

As well as the diptera, we collected a lot of the other orders and many of my colleagues are eager to get there little paws on this too!!

And we also learnt how to do the shush shush dance – I am sure that there is a proper name for that but that is how it stuck in my head. The people were so friendly and the children were forever trying to catch us insects. The beetle people had to try and stop the children rummaging through cow pats for them!!

A great country to collect in and hopefully we will return to carry on the research on these precise fragments of habitat.

Thought that I had better get a blog piece in quickly as for the next couple of months it will be all about the travel.

So before I had off to the wilds, I thought that I would write about something that was brought to me by one of the Botanists; a most exciting specimen of some bracket fungus (Ganoderma applanatum). It was not the fungus that was intriguing me though but what was on it/in it .....

There were hundreds of galls caused by Agathomyia wankowiczii (I guess over a hundred years ago that name did not sound as silly as now!) larvae. This is a type of fly called the flat-footed fly (aptly named as they have enlarged hind tarsi i.e. large back feet!). Talking of silly names, there is a book called Bizarre Books, a compendium of Classic oddities by Russell Ash and Brian Lake and one of the books that they cite is our very own Peter Chandler's (of Diptera Handbook and Checklist fame) book 'The Flat-Footed Flies of Europe' - many many librarians etc found this title amusing!

See in the image above the enlarged final section of the hind leg - very distinctive!

Now in the UK we have 33 species of these relatively small flies although this little one is a fairly recent arrival to our shores. And it’s the only insect species to form galls in Fungus in Britain- a very special fly. The galls are where the larvae develop and they are able to do this as the fungus is a slow growing species and so does not decay before the grubs have developed. Once fully grown they create a whole at the top of the gall (which is the bottom as they are on the underside). Gravity does the next bit and once landed they dig down into the soil before eventually pupating and the adults emerge. The adults are either found running around on leaves (they feed on honeydew) whilst some species e.g. Microsania are known as smoke flies since they like to swarm in fires! (a rather unusual pastime). The species in question is also the only orange one in the UK (and it is bright orange!!) and so is conveniently call the Yellow flat-footed fly…….

Agathomyia wankowiczii © Judy Webb. This is exceptionally yellow

Now very little is known about the distribution of these flies and we have none in the National Collection! but at least we do have this very fine specimen now to show off! If you do come across them though the Dipterists Forum would love to know their locality data www.dipteristsforum.org.uk

It still amazes me that there is so much we don't know about the British Fauna - Just goes to show you how much is happening all around us without us realising.....

Many people, quite rightly, are very concerned about Biodiversity, that is the species richness and abundance of everything on the planet. We go around the world collecting and trying to identify species (not always as easy as you would think!) hoping to answer many questions relating to this topic.

In the UK, we are incredibly fortunate to have a plethora of recording schemes, ranging for my hopeless craneflies that loose their legs at every opportunity, up to birds and mammals, and many other animals, and let’s not forget the plants! These are all really important for us to track the species distributions patterns in the UK and also any changes in indigenous, as well as exotic species.

Picture 1. Here is an axample for the Biological records Centre detailing some of the recording schemes in the UK

This helps us when it comes to conservation of species e.g. is the species locally common or nationally rare? Or both? Large Mammal, Plant and especially Bird recording communities (RSPB, BTO) can work very well with observational records i.e. records where the species being observed do not have to be killed in order to determine correct identification (although some may argue that many species have been misidentified even of the common species). However, when it comes to most of the invertebrates, and here I will specifically talk about the insects, this is not the common case. Many of the characters used to identify insects are often cryptic, how many of you regularly cut up genitalia? These, being internal are very hard to see when a fly is whizzing past your head

Picture 2. Here is the genitalia of a robberfly. Now you have to work out how many spines, what direction they are facing, general external shape etc...

Which brings me to the point of this blog. Recently there was a piece on the NHM website about the identification of a new stratiomyiidae, the drab wood soldier fly, Solva marginata record in the wildlife garden by one of my fellow entomologists, David Notton. There was a piece on the website and this was circulated to the Dipterist community and beyond! There were some comments back, some good, and some bad. ‘Excellent to have this fly turn up in the middle of London but why the anti-collecting comments on the photo?’ This is not the first time people have raised concerns about why you need to kill a specimen. This debate is springing up everywhere, with people arguing now that with the advent of online identification services such as i-spot and the museums own online identification service we don't need to do this! Many of these can be reliable and sometimes exceptionally useful (see my blog piece on the Beeflies).

Picture 3. Here is the Solva marginata. This was taken by Nigel Jones, a great UK Dipterists at Attingham Park, Shrewsbury

However, this is not always the case. Some recent work done for a master’s thesis by Claudia Watts, who is also a committee member for both the London Natural History Society and the British Entomological and Natural History Society found that many of the photographs that had been sent in for identification could not determine what the specimen was or only to a higher taxonomic level than species. Only 60% of the photographs of British aculeate Hymenoptera posted on wildlife social networking sites were able to be identified (the group that she was working on, which includes the bees, wasps and ants). An example that she gives in her thesis is shown here;

She states –‘A male bumblebee Bombus sp. The individual antennal segments can be

counted to confirm this as a male, but the bee’s ‘tail’ is not visible, so despite the technical quality of the photograph, the specimen cannot be identified to species’

More and more are becoming concerned that people are relying too much on this form of identification, and not collecting, and therefore not enough specimens are being added to collections for posterity. A colleague and I recently ran an Introduction to Insects course at the NHM (which we will be running again!!) to front of house staff who deal with day to day questions from the public. Some of the more common ones are why do we have to kill specimens, don’t we have enough? The simple answer is no. And there are several reasons why this is the case;

Firstly, it is hard to identify many of the species unless you have the specimen there in front of you. Many of my flies are very small and therefore require looking at under a microscope to ensure correct identification.

Secondly, who is to say that the initial identification was correct? I had a lovely example of this recently where an expert on one group of flies came in to look through the British collection, and was shocked at some of the incorrect identifications. Upon examining the label he was even more amused to find that they were done by him many years previously!

Thirdly, without these specimens that go back many hundreds of years we would not be able to determine if there were any morphological changes (i.e. has the colour changed etc). Classic examples of colour change have been seen with the peppered moth but we also have examples of other changes such as size and patterns. By having specimens to go back to and compare with, we can determine whether these are true changes or not.

People will always be concerned about whether killing specimens will have a detrimental affect on the insect populations - surely if we are trying to maintain and enhance biodiversity the last thing that we want to do is go round removing more of them! Well this is definitely true for many of the vertebrates whose actual population numbers are very low. However, this is not the same with Insects where the population numbers are often enourmous -

This is a photo from an F-16 aircraft at Luke AFB showing a honey bee swarm...quite a fantastic photo.

Credit - MSgt Todd E. Enderle, 309 AMU/MXACW, 13 Oct 2005, submitted by Wayne Fordham, HQ AFCESA/CESM, Tyndall AFB, FL.

Now even if a hundred are killed you are not even scratching the surface. In a paper by Stuart ball and Roger Morris http://www.bacoastal.co.uk/Entomology/2004-Mark-release.pdf - they described a mark-release recapture experiment with hoverflies, which enables you to work out the true population numbers and found that they were sampling approximately 16% of the population - they simply were not reaching all of the population! Needless killing of individuals is wrong, but when it is to answer questions that are essential in understanding biodiversity, species interactions and population change linking into amongst other things global warning, then it is a vital component of scientific study.

Ok so here is some of the recuration work that I do;

At the moment I am working on the Bombyliids - the bee flies, and I am recurating the subfamily Phthiriinae as I type . These are fairly small, stripy flies unlike our more familiar Bombylius major we see flying around our gardens.

This collection was transferred some time ago from the very old slats into these unit trays which are no longer deemed acceptable housing - pests can get into the substrate etc, and many of the labels are completely out of date. As well as the poor housing the Museum was donated a large collection which I am incorporating into the main collection.. Sometimes the recuration is easy, all the specimens are correctly labelled and there have been no taxonomic revisions. Other times it’s not so easy….

Take this one for example. Here is a snapshot of some of the specimens in the unit tray

.

And here is the description in the most up to date catalogue (2003);

‘dolorosus

Phthiria dolorosa Williston, 1901: 290. TYPE LOCALITY: Mexico (Guerrero) [L designated by Painter & Painter (1962: 35) in BMNH*].

Phthiria sororia Williston, 1901: 291. TYPE LOCALITY: Mexico (Guerrero) [3S in AMNH*].

DISTRIBUTION: Nearctic: Mexico (Guerrero, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Morelos, Puebla, Querétaro de Arteaga).’

What this description is telling us is that species dolorosa was originally described by Williston in 1901 in the genus Phthiria, and you can find this in that publication on page 290. The material that he used to base this new species on was from Mexico (Guerrero to be more precise).

This species is now no longer in the genus Phthiria, and in fact was moved to the genus Neacreotrichus by a husband and wife team Painter and Painter in 1962, but I will get back to this later. In the description we are also told that there is now a L in the BMNH (this means Lectotype in the British  Museum of Natural History, us!). Moving species around genera is a very common occurrence- taxonomists disagree all the time and sometimes species may move many times! It is hard to keep track of sometimes!!  

Here is the original description that Williston wrote about this species;

He states that there were 6 specimens and the exact locality is given and that they were collected by H. H. Smith. We have four in the NHM and these are indeed the specimens mentioned in this description. The other two specimens are in another museum or lost with time (at least one is at the American Museum of Natural History AMNH).

I will come to the lectotype part in a moment. However, when there was no holotype designated (the specimen from which the species is described) then all or some of the specimens from the series that were collected are designated Syntype status, which is what originally happened here.

Now getting back to the present labels and the designation of lectotype; this is because an individual specimen needs to be the reference for the name, as when a name is based on a series of several specimens there may be problems if the series is later found to contain more than one species (as sometimes happens), and so one of the Syntypes is chosen as a Lectotype. So we can see that yes indeed we have P.dolorosa designated as LT and four PLT. From the most current catalogue we see that this was done by Painter and Painter in 1962. (i hope that you are all still following this!)

The label in the drawer though is now wrong and this is because when Painter and Painter decided that no this species does not belong in Phthiria (feminine) but instead Neacreotrichus (masculine) then the ending was no longer correct and so the feminine dolorosa became masculine dolorosus! This is because Latin names for both the genus and species have to be of the same gender. New labels to be made then .

…. and there is a further mystery concerning this tray of flies.

When searching the original description Williston in 1901 designated all of these flies (from the then 2 species) as syntypes. This means that no individual fly was used as the Holotype. What has happened when Painter came along was that some of the other catalogues did not record this change in status so when you check the status of the specimen for example on the AMNH site it still has them listed as Cotypes (which is an old term for Syntypes);

this needs to be changed!

And to further complicate the matter - In the latest catalogue it also states that Phthiria sororia Williston 1901 (on page 291 for the original description) is a junior synonym of dolorosus. Again this was the lovely Painter couple in 1962;

At the very beginning they describe P. sororia as a new synonym (i.e. they are infact the same species but as dolorosa was described first (albeit a few pages!!) it retains the name. In the collection there is the designation of Lectotype and Paralectypes; the lectotype designation for sororia is also in the extract from Painter & Painter’s paper! It’s in the paragraph below where they designate the lectotype for dolorosa, in this sentence: “The lectotype was selected from the Amula (Sept.) group”).

Now on many sites and catalogues this species has been left as a cotype whilst others as LT’s and PLT’s!! So by updating our own catalogue and with the data being fully accessible on the web hopefully more people will respond to the change in status (it was only 49 years ago that it happened…. ) – if there were any changes though we would all the original labels on the specimens – in fact I would never remove a label but instead add one if I discovered new information on the nomenclature etc…you can often have large stacks of labels which can be problematic on a short pin!!

I will edit the database to update the nomenclature changes and if the types do not already have one, I will add a specimen number. These are so we can track all of the type material. The collection at the NHM is the most type rich in the world and we have rather a larger number of specimens to database!! We are progressing though and you can check on line how we are doing!!!

As well as the electronic editing we re-house the specimens in conservation grade unit trays. These are lined with plastozote – which is inert and so does not release any chemicals etc which could result in damage to the specimens. Everything from the glue that is used, the paper that the labels are made from to the wood that is used to construct the drawers has been researched to determine whether it is suitable for museum collections. We will spend a long time researching a new product before we use it. After all the collections date back to the 1680’s – we want to ensure that they are around for a few more years!!!

All done I move onto the next species. Only another 4000 to go .

Well it’s been a long time since I have posted a piece on the blog, sorry! So here are some of the things that have been preoccupying my time! Again I have been away on fieldwork (some more successful than others!!), we have had an all change in the department and I have been busy with visitors, projects and general day to day life!!

So firstly we have a new keeper (Dr Andy Polaszek, a hymenopterist!) and soon to take over as head of collections once Howard Mendel retires is Theresa Howard (My line manager!). It is sad in one way as it is the end of an era. Howard secured my first contract with the NHM and encouraged me with my work but I feel that the department is in good hands with Theresa to take us on through difficult times. We have a lot of work to do in a limited amount of time – but I guess that is a common problem.

As to more fun stuff ! I wrote most of this blog whilst sitting in a hotel in Sao   Paulo. We were due to go on fieldwork in Paraguay but that has been postponed and so I am utilising my time well here. It is the first time that I have seen the collection here which is the largest in Brazil. Carlos Lamas (a dipterist who specialises in beeflies) overseas the collection and I had great fun noising around in it. Although the collection is open (not in cabinets) they do not suffer from pests or changes in temperature or humidity and the collection is in very good condition. They do have a lot of work to do though as these pictures show!!!

Some unidentified material! (Figure 1)

We also spent our time sorting out future collaborations and transfer agreements. Both sides are very keen to have a closer relationship. Dalton de Souza Amorim is another ‘fly man’ that I work with in Brazil. We are working on some ‘lost’ types which have been rediscovered in our collection in London. At the NHM we have an impressive new imaging lab in the Darwin centre and I am now beginning to play around with the system. We have a clever piece of software (not unique to the NHM) which allows us to create a picture which is composed of many images overlying each other so creating a greater depth of field. We can do this with specimens that are just 2mm and so enable us to look at the wings and the hairs on the genitalia!! I have been creating images of fungus gnat genitalia (it always gets back to that in the end) as well as helping the IPM (integrated pest management) group take photos of unidentified beetles found in the museum.

Dalton de Souza Amorim in the collection (Figure 2)

I have written the second half of this blog again whilst sitting in a hostel in Sao Paulo but this time on my return from Paraguay and all that is good there. As most people are aware we have had to postpone the major collecting trip into the dry Chaco but hopefully that will still happen. However as several of us were already in the region, on our way, we headed to Asuncion to sort out some things. The people we met were incredibly helpful – most of them are hopefully coming on the trip with us and they will be amazing! A lot of them have spent time sampling around Paraguay and have a very good local knowledge. We spent some time in the Museum  of Natural History, which is the most compact little museum but crammed full of amazing specimens. But they stretch up to the ceiling with the gaps between the collections becoming smaller and smaller!

John Kochalka working his way through the collection! (Figure 3)

It is warren of cabinets that all need looking in! I spent some time photographing all of the drawers of the Diptera collection and specific specimens inside.

An unidentified Tachinid (Figure 4)

A drawer of unsorted material – the little flies in the bottom right corner with the orange labels are the ones caught in the Dry Chaco. (Figure 5)

Hopefully I will be able to pass these on to people to identify the specimens. Luckily they have started colour coding the material from the different biomes in the country. All the specimens that have not been identified and that are from the Dry Chaco have been photographed for identification! We have also agreed to sort out permits to exchange material across the museums to speed up the identification process! There are lots of people in Brazil for example working on groups that are unidentified in the museum! I also spent my time looking at the ‘crazy’ flies that the one of the invertebrate curators John Kochalka kept fishing out for me! There was a crazy thunder storm during the day and several leaks sprung from the ceiling luckily not in the collection though!

We were taken to a camp one night out of the city at a friend’s father’s Estacion! Oh and it was lovely. We went for a walk in the surrounding area – that was great – a mix of botanists and entomologists so the pace was very slow!! We climbed the only hill in the area (Paraguay is very flat) and enjoyed the great views from the top.

This is Juana De Egea, a very good Paraguayan Botanist (Figure 6)

A robber fly just enjoying the sunshine! (Figure 7)

We set up a sheet at night for seeing what moths etc were in the area (there was no collecting just observing!). It was completely invaded by termites to start with which encouraged some of the other local inhabitants to visit us!

Please note the termite that didn’t make it into the mouth! (Figure 8)

But there were many different types of moths, beetles, bugs but sadly no flies!

One of the many species of Moth. (Figure 9)

So all in all a very positive outcome for the time we were there.

And on my return journey - I again spent some time in the Museum of Sao Paulo and we were able to look at all of the photo's that I took whilst in the Museum of Paraguay and we established that there were new species of Diptera just sitting in the collection as well as new records to the country! We are working on now describing the material!!

Hi there blog readers!

Erica’s asked me to write a post telling you about my time volunteering in Entomology, and after a few days of procrastinating, I’ve decided to knuckle down and get to it. This is my second draft, my first ended up being half a dozen pages long and judging by the Doctor’s reaction, that’s a bit too long for a blog post...

I don’t know how to condense 6 months into a few paragraphs!!!

So here goes, my name’s Adam and I’m 28 years old (that’s young for somebody working at the museum). I’ve been volunteering in ‘Entom’ for almost six months, and it’s been quite an experience! I walked in through the staff entrance on Exhibition Road on a chilly afternoon in February with a notebook in my hand and absolutely no idea of what I had signed up for. During my induction I was privy to a number of interesting tales about my new supervisor, but thankfully most of them have turned out to be untrue (apart from the one where I was told she’s spectacular!).

I’m working as part of a team of 10-15 volunteers sorting through and classifying insect material that was collected from the rain forests of French Guiana at the end of last year. We essentially have twenty jars of insect sludge that’s been preserved in alcohol for the last six months and smells pretty bad! Inside each jar there are thousands of insects and we pick through them one by one and attempt to determine what they are. We normally classify to Order level (if you don’t know what that is then Google ‘taxonomy’), but with the help of Erica and an amazing collection of books in the museum’s libraries we’re starting to identify some families too. It’s really nice to be making progress...

...anyway, we’re a big group of volunteers, and we all have varying degrees of experience in the subject. I was worried when I first started volunteering that everybody was going to be spectacularly clever and that I wouldn’t have a clue what was going on. I was really happy when that didn’t transpire to be true! Everyone’s come from a different background, and everybody has oodles of character that they bring to the lab, but one thing that we all have in common is our willingness to help each other out if ever we’re stuck! It’s created a really dynamic environment and has enabled us to learn loads of stuff about Entomology that six months ago we simply didn’t know.

So everything’s going well. We’re learning new things all of the time, and we’re trying not to be too disruptive in the process.

The staff at the museum have been great too. There are so many volunteers, it would be easy to take us for granted, but that’s not been the case. Most people have been really welcoming, and helpful. We’ve often had the opportunity to explore other departments in the museum. I had a personal tour of the Entomology Library off-site in Wandsworth; I’ve been to see some amazingly weird and huge fish preserved in formalin in the basement of the Darwin Centre; I recently went on a tour of the photographic unit too and it was really interesting to see how specimens were photographed for commercial and scientific purposes...

...but after all that science, there comes a time in the day when the lights are dimmed and the visitors go home, and that’s when the NHM like to throw a party! I’ve been to three or four now and they’ve been great opportunities to get to know people working in the museum and other volunteers on a social level.

I’ve had a great six months, and wherever my life takes me from here I’ll always look back fondly on the time I’ve spent with Erica and The Volunteers. We’re going on a field-trip to Exmoor next weekend. We organised it between us; we’ve booked a little ‘bunk-house’ in the middle of the moor and Erica’s driving us down in a minibus. It’s going to be an adventure, and it’s one that I’m really looking forward to. I think another volunteer is going to write and tell you about that one!!

Let’s hope it doesn’t rain!!!

Well I have just been to some of the most glorious countryside in the UK. The Dipterists forum annual summer collecting trip was based in Stackpole, South Wales at a Natural Trust Centre. This was surrounded by wood, and fields, and Lakes (containing Otters although I did not see any!!) and the Centre itself had a large hall within which we set up our microscopes!

One of the lovely lakes that had Otters.

It is always a great week, concentrating on collecting flies from as many different habitats as possible, to add data to recording schemes as well as building personal collections, and in our case building and maintaining the comprehensiveness of the National British Collection. We (another colleague and I) get to spend the week collecting, pinning and id’ing flies with some of the UK experts in a range of different fly groups. Alan Stubbs (co-author of British Soldierflies and their Allies, and British Hoverflies) is one of the main men (and very very good on craneflies) and an absolute ice-cream demon. Peter Chandler (co-author of ‘A Dipterist’s Handbook’ and the British Checklist of Diptera) is another and is the UK expert on fungus gnats (but not very good at opening ice cream tubs). They, and another 28 roamed the countryside for the best fly (and bee, sawfly, bug and the odd beetle! there were many groupies!!) John Kramer and Richard Underwood were also present who regularly volunteer at the NHM and again are very good Dipterists.

Please if you see these people do not approach (Dipterists at large)...

After a long drive, we had nothing to do but eat, a consistently good theme of the week. We were allocated rooms and then set up our microscopes. We had a quick walk down to the Lake which in the setting sun was more than pleasant

Hunting started properly the next day. We set off to the Coast to sample amongst the Dunes. I had great fun chasing Robberflies, trying to poot’ Dolichopodids of the cliff face, attempting to catch shore flies (they fly so close to the surface you just end up whacking the net against the rocks!) and sweeping along the edge of a stream whilst paddling!! Oh sometimes, fieldwork is just so difficult I don’t know how I cope...

Fieldwork involves a lot of ice cream....

The afternoon we moved on to woodlands (now here you will be pleased to know that I scratched my legs to death) and ended up at Scrubby Bottom where we were attacked by horseflies (which we killed and have subsequently pinned ).

The evenings are spent eating, and pinning. We use Cherry Lorrel for killing the flies as it is not only an effective killer but it also relaxes the specimens as well and so we are able to pin them in the most appropriate way. You can stick a micropin through most of them and then pull out their legs, so that most of their limbs are elongated and the wings are carefully pinned, spread away from the body.

Here is a horse fly which has had it's wings spread out so we can clearly see the markings on the abdomen

These are left in that position overnight to ensure that the legs, wings etc set in the correct position. We had prepared some little labels which enabled us to quickly sort the material into correct dates and sites.

The next couple of days were doing very similar things. We would gather around in the morning, pouring over maps. They had been highlighted with ‘hotspot’ areas of woodlands, marshes, dunes etc which were thought to be great for the little flies. Most people were collecting specific families of flies and therefore their requirements would differ. Peter was collecting fungus gnats and therefore preferred damp woodland, whilst I was hunting for Robber flies and so liked hanging out in the dunes. That must have been a lovely sight for the general public to see me on my hands and knees with my pooter tube in my mouth and a net in one hand poised, ready to catch a fly. There may have been a little bit of bad language as well when I missed them….

Me collecting from a stream (thanks to Ken Merrifield)

We took one day off to collect on Skomer. I say take off as although I and the others did collect flies, I got very distracted by the Puffins . Amazing little things. The path ran alongside the cliff and as they land with their beaks stuffed full of fish, they wait for us humans to move aside so they can run over it and into their burrows. We had accidentally left a bag in the way and you could almost sense the impatience (and watch them tap their little feet in frustration) as they waited for us to sort ourselves out and move the offending article before shooting across!!

here it was waiting.....

And then a mad dash across the path

One of the most productive days was just down a country lane where there was a mixture of open habitat and closed canopy (and therefore a slightly damper area). Loads of lovely flies here including Horseflies (which I have to say are incredibly attractive J), Hoverflies and some Mycetophilidae (fungus gnats!)

As well as us Dipterists, we had some other entomologists sneak along with us including a sawfly specialist and a bee specialist. It is actually really nice to have a variety of people as you end up learning other interesting facts and how to collect different groups.

All in all a brilliant week. I have to say that is some of the loveliest countryside I have seen in a while. I can not believe that I have been all over recently and I seem to be raving more about what is on our own doorstep!

Excellent meadows for the hoverflies etc

Am back in the Museum for a week as it is National Insect week and I am doing two talks!! It should be good as I just talk about how wonderful flies are!!! (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/national-insect-week/index.html)