Back to the future

Too much reading about the Burgess shale made this photo recall fossils...

Back in the real world though the left is a fungus gnat and the right a female Lonchoptera bifurcata, both of which were beaten from gorse on the 22nd of January. Both very lovely specimens, the Lonchoptera is the second Lonchoptera species recorded at Cullaloe - only seven species in Britain. The fungus gnat ... well, that's not quite so easy!

Picture-winged Flies

Been a few additions to the Cullaloe diptera list of late, but all from specimens taken last year. Here are two of the latest additions - Chaetostomella cylindrica and Herina frondescentia

Taxonomy visualiser

http://www.tombio.uk/taxvis

Beating around the bush

A speculative prod at some gorse bushes on Friday produced some interest in terms of both spiders and flies, with several families of spider represented entirely by subadult specimens - Lycosid, Clubionid, Thomisid, Linyphiid. Two flies which emerged were an as yet unknown Nematoceran and my first Lonchoptera which hasn't been determined to species yet. There was also a Chloropid fly which is probably another Elachiptera cornuta agg.

Ozyptila sp.

Nematocera and Lonchoptera

Elachiptera sp.

iRecord numbers

2442 records
995 species

Cullaloe records on iRecord ... only 5 records to go until 1000 species just on iRecord

Should be about the end of January then!

This fly caught last summer just went under the microscope last night .. Palloptera modesta.

Arthropod hox loci

As a result of reading Wonderful Life, the story of picking away at the Burgess shale, I stumbled across this on wiki:

" all arthropods have the same complement of nine Hox loci"

I may forget this is here but once in a while I might stumble on it at a later point in understanding. 9 hox loci. All arthropods. Very interesting

Hyphomycete fungus Trimmatostroma betulinum

The clock keeps ticking over on new species but many are not spectacular to look at! This fungus on living birch twigs creates little chains of conidio-spores which come off sooty on your fingertip if you rub it

Nuts! Who-ole hazelnuts

Hazel in flower already at Cullaloe and here are some nice nuts from last season. unfortunately I dropped them and lost them, so the fungus on them will never be identified. Unless I fnid some more I suppose

Lichen Tephromela atra - Black Shields

Should be called Purple Shields really, since they are just really, really dark purple. It was nice to see the character that the whole apothecium content is purple since I now know that a couple of other things I looked at couldn't have been Tephromela.

This is lichen number 39 for Cullaloe, and species 1315

The black shields

closer

A sectional view - all purple ...

... very purple

8 colourless, aseptate spores

Steven Falk's slug page on flikr

A nice resource for slugs, which I am not interested in. Not at all. Not even on the radar ...


https://www.flickr.com/photos/63075200@N07/collections/72157631294214552/

Inonotus radiata - Alder Bracket

On an alder beside the road. Has mazy pores, but not so much as other mazegills or Daedalopsis confragata (Blushing Bracket). This one is surprisingly zonate, but has the expected hairy upper surface.While it resembles Trametes versicolor (Turkeytail) that species has round pores which termiate before the margin, and doesn't have the flamenco dress frilliness in the margin either.

New species ticking along

Another fungus added to the Cullaloe list keeps the Fungal (135) and Overall (1311) totals ticking over. This one is a nice pruinose ascomycete on Salix, but is a general pluriverous species of wood

Feautured in Ellis and Ellis as Propolomyces versicolor, in NBN/iRecord, as well as Mycobank, it is called Propolis farinosa. It's an attractive species, filling up holes where the bark is becoming decorticated and heavily farinose

Another day, another fungus

So three new fungi so far this year and a couple more candidates in a box. This Green Elfcup was found on Willow above the car park. In the race to a targetted 1500 species (total) this year this one takes the reserve to 1309. Only 191 new species left to go!

Old photographs

It's funny how looking at old photos with new eyes can reveal new detail. This photo, from the base of a Coprinus plicatlilis photo, reveals an unrecorded fungus Cymathoideum trifolii on Clover leaves. At the time of taking it I couldn't have named either species. Wonder what else I'll find trawling through the old unidentifieds.

New fungus - Exidia, thuretiana - White Brain

A nice new fungus at lunchtime today in the rain. This year I will be trying to resist keeping a year list, which should be easy since I haven't started one. I will list only additions along with the groups I have chosen to specifically zoom in on - fungi, flies, spiders and epiphytes. And ... no! no and! Well, let's see

Here it is - the white brain

2015 roundup

So the year finished on 775 species with over 200 species added to the reserve catalgoue. A surprise addition while looking for epiphytic lichens in the willows was the 94th bryophyte species - Orthotrichum Lyellii

The total breakdown for 2015 was as follows:

Taxon Group	Number of Records	Number of Taxa
acarine (Acari)	1	1
amphibian	4	3
bird	88	79
centipede	2	2
conifer	2	2
crustacean	5	4
false scorpion (Pseudoscorpiones)	3	1
fern	5	5
flowering plant	185	158
fungus	133	102
harvestman (Opiliones)	2	2
horsetail	2	2
insect - alderfly (Megaloptera)	2	2
insect - beetle (Coleoptera)	29	23
insect - butterfly	25	10
insect - dragonfly (Odonata)	2	2
insect - earwig (Dermaptera)	1	1
insect - hymenopteran	10	7
insect - lacewing (Neuroptera)	1	1
insect - moth	154	119
insect - orthopteran	1	1
insect - scorpion fly (Mecoptera)	1	1
insect - stonefly (Plecoptera)	2	1
insect - true bug (Hemiptera)	8	8
insect - true fly (Diptera)	242	84
lichen	38	32
liverwort	16	12
millipede	5	4
mollusc	4	3
moss	77	60
spider (Araneae)	53	38
springtail (Collembola)	2	2
terrestrial mammal	3	3