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