Sections

Last week I received my Spring 2010 copy of “The Bulletin of the Dipterists Forum” (The Bulletin). In addition to having a much improved redesigned layout compared to Spring 2009, this is undoubtedly the best entomological publication that I subscribe to. Even though my main interest lies with the Hemiptera, The Bulletin is always an engaging read and contains a range of generally interesting to specialised articles. One of the features I particularly like is the separation of the newsletters for the various recording schemes and study groups because you can quickly find information on your taxonomic groups of interest.

The Dipterists Forum is a good start for those interested in finding out more about our British flies. This handsome individual is the Hornet Robberfly, Asilus crabroniformis.

The other really great thing about The Bulletin (and the Dipterists Forum) is the value for money. The annual membership fee is £15 and includes two publications (twice yearly bulletins and the journal, “Dipterists Digest“). The Dipterists Forum website is also particularly useful and you do not have to be a member to use it, although additional material is available to members (test keys, unpublished material, PDFs of past Bulletins and distribution maps). As previously mentioned, Diptera are not the order that I work with, but such good value means I can happily subscribe anyway.

In the latest issue alone there were six articles that I want to comment on and discuss. Some other entomological societies should take note and try to offer similar online services and good content (e.g. PDF back issues and extras).

I was in the kitchen late one night when something caught my eye. An insect of some sort quickly scuttled across the floor and hid in the darkness under a cupboard. From the brief look I got, I suspected that it was an odd looking hemipteran.

What was it?

As I moved closer I saw it was rather drab and it retreated further, looking a little sinister.

Closer still, I got a proper look at its body and saw that it had really reduced wings and some vicious mouthparts.

Suddenly I starting thinking of sheep keds, Melophagus ovinus, the wingless blood sucking flies that are parasites of sheep. I decided that I didn’t really want to poke it with my fingers, so got a container, my copy of Chinery and a camera.

After flicking through the Diptera I found the section on the Hippoboscidae, the so called flat-flies. Looks like this particular one was, Crataerina hirundinis, a parasite of  martins and swallows. Although not confirmed, it made sense, as I think we have house martins, Delichon urbica, in the loft.

Hippoboscidae: Craeterina hirundinis

The Hippoboscidae are unusual because many have reduced wings and the females give birth to fully grown larvae rather than lay eggs.

I found a few more in the kitchen (now removed) but am uncertain how they got there. Even though I think they wouldn’t bite me, I feel uneasy walking around with bare feet!

My April holidays have ended and I am back at work. I spent a lot of time in the garden, digging vegetable beds and constructing some pallet-based compost bins.

Whilst last week was fairly rainy, the previous week had some nice sunny days so there was plenty of insect activity. I have seen much more insect variety, with various flies, butterflies and bees on the wing.

The holidays seem to use my time faster than when I am working so I will just post some spring insect photos for now:

Anthophora plumipes (male).

A leafhopper, Euscelis incisus.

A lateral fly shot, probably a bluebottle.

Update (22.02.2009): There have been some recent sightings of hoverflies posted on Flickr by avid insect photographer timz501.

Eristalis tenax female © Tim Ransom

This week the Spring issue of the Bulletin of the Dipterists Forum arrived in the post and contained lots of fly-based goodness. It included the newsletters for many of the (mostly) family specific study groups and recording schemes. Of these, it was the Hoverfly Newsletter which caught my interest the most because I am more familiar with the British hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) than I am with any other dipteran family.

Helophilus pendulus (female) - Photographed at the London Wetland Centre

The Dipterists Forum are currently involved in the production of provisional hoverfly atlas.

The Hoverfly Recording Scheme has been in existance since 1976 but Stuart Ball, one of the organisers of the scheme, is hoping to get long-term volunteers to monitor an area over the main hoverfly season, late April to mid-July. Having a long-term monitoring program for “constant effort sites” can provide more information than single recordings made on a site.

Currently the butterflies are the only group of insects which have well organised long-term monitoring programs in the British Isles.

The bee-fly, Bombylius major (Diptera: Bombyliidae), is one of my favourite British insects. Its appearance is quite distinctive as it’s reasonably sized (the body excluding the proboscis is ~1cm), quite hairy and has distinctive dark wing patterns. It’s a good flier and can often be found hovering, teasing you to take a photograph, before darting away when you get too close.

Bombylius major at rest, © Tristan Bantock

It emerges fairly early in the year (early March onwards) and will hopefully be one of the first insects I take photos of in 2009. So far I’ve been unable to take a good photo yet as the individuals I’ve encountered were too skittish to get close enough to. Fortunately a fellow flickr entomologist, tristanba (Tristan Bantock), has allowed me to use some of his photographs to illustrate this post.

Bombylius major in flight, © Tristan Bantock

Whilst the long proboscis looks a little intimidating, the fly is harmless as it uses it for feeding on the nectar of flowers. If you happened to be a sapient solitary bee you wouldn’t be pleased to see B. major flying around your burrow as its larvae parasitise the bee larvae.

A recent study (Cator et al, 2009) published in Science has found that the mosquito Aedes aegypti uses harmonic convergence of their flight tones (wing beat frequency) in their mating ritual.

A. aegypti is an important species of mosquito as it acts as a vector for two human viral diseases: dengue and yellow fever. Whilst a vaccine exists for yellow fever, we lack one for dengue so alternate methods of combating the disease are needed. One way of achieving this is to control the mosquito population by releasing many genetically modified sterilised male insects which prevents the production of viable offspring, something that some of the study’s authors are involved with. This recent discovery of the mosquitoe’s mating strategy allow the audible appeal of the modified males to be assessed before release, increasing the chances of a modified male mating with a female in the wild.

The study also found that the mosquito’s auditory sensory organ, the Johnston’s organ, can detect frequencies of up to 2kHz, higher than was previously thought.

I first read about the study on Wired Science News (Wall, 2009).

References:
Cator, L.J., Arthur, B.J., Harrington, L.C., and Hoy, R.R. (2009) Harmonic Convergence in the Love Songs of the Dengue Vector Mosquito. Science, 8th January [Online]. Available at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1166541 (Science Express) [Accessed 9th January 2009].

Wall, M. (2009) Whining and Dining: Love, Mosquito Style. Wired, [internet] 8th January. Available at:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/01/mosquitowings.html [Accessed 9th January 2009]