Myggornas planet

 

- Kan det vara myggor, kanske?

Myggor har varit "evolutionärt stabila" (och sett ut ungefär som idag) i 100 miljoner års tid. Anatomiskt moderna människor har bara funnits i omkring 300 000 års tid! Jag menar, vad fan...

Har dock inte förstått vem de ettriga tvåvingarna drack blod ifrån "när det begav sig". Varmblodiga dinosaurier?

100 miljoner år gamla myggor funna i bärnsten

Offended by the euphemisms

 

A guy with ideas that offend 

OK, I can´t let this one go...

The bizarre thing with the Woke is that they use "safe space" euphemisms even when discussing fascism and Nazism. It´s like a sick joke. Maybe it is?

Bro, Mussolini´s fascism wasn´t "an idea that offends". Nor does the name Hitler "have an objectionable sound to modern ears". Nor were Adolph and Benito simply "controversial figures". Geezus. The Nazis were genocidal maniacs, for crying out loud!

And why is Beyoncé mentioned in the same headline as Duce and der Führer? 

They are laughing at us. I´m offended by the euphemisms. Can I file a complaint with the HR department? 

Hitler beetle, Trump moth, Beyoncé fly 

The Based Beagle

 

"If I stand like this for several days, maybe Fauci won´t see me"

In case you didn´t understand the joke:

Fauci´s NIH division partially funded insects eating beagles alive

Look who´s trying to teach us animal rights

Credits: CC-BY SA 3.0

I´m not a big fan of Fauci, and I wouldn´t be surprised if he turns out to have a couple of metaphorical skeletons in his metaphorical closet, but it *is* rather bizarre to see Trumpista outfit Breitbart News suddenly go full animal rights on the man. 

I don´t think eco-fascism or even slightly green traditional conservatism of the absentee landlordism type was ever part of Breitbart´s big tent right-wing strategy, but now they (and some GOP congresspersons) sound like angry young vegans or something. 

I suppose politics (and smear campaigns) are a complicated game. Or shell game...

Fauci funded research about insects eating dogs alive

Nordic tribes

"Nationalnyckeln till Sveriges flora och fauna" is a multi-volume work covering select portions of the Swedish plant- and wildlife. Originally intended to cover *all* (!) species of plants, animals and fungi in Sweden, the series is now published on a more sporadic basis. 

"Tvåvingar: Blomflugor.  Diptera: Syrphidae: Syrphinae" (otherwise known as volume DH53a) covers 169 species of hoverflies of the subfamily Syrphinae. The two other syrphid subfamilies, Eristalinae and Microdontinae, are covered in vol DH53b (reviewed by me elsewhere on this blog). For some reason, the hoverfly volumes cover all Nordic species, not just the Swedish ones. The Nordic countries and territories are Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Svalbard. Greenland is excluded. 

Volume DH53a begins with a general overview of the hoverfly family, including sections on morphology, ecology, species diversity and collection for study (why would anyone want to kill and collect these beautiful creatures, is beyond me). Systematics are apparently difficult in this group. The existence of three subfamilies is generally accepted, the number and extent of tribes and genera not so much. "Nationalnyckeln" accepts the following tribes within Syrphinae: Bacchini, Melanostomini, Paragini, Chrysotoxini, Syrphini. 

The bulk of the book contains species presentations. General characteristics, behavior, range, and the etymology and pronunciation of the scientific name are discussed for each species. Range maps are included. The Swedish vernacular names seem to be mostly new, constructed by the "Committee for Swedish Animal Names" (I didn´t know we had one!). Each species is illustrated both to scale and magnified, and most illustrations are in color. There are also lavish color photos in the introduction. There are very short English summaries, and bilingual identification keys, but otherwise this is a Swedish in-house work. 

Still, since hoverflies are more appealing than, say, gadflies, the volume could be an excellent collector´s item even if you don´t understand a word of it! Recommended. 

Code name hoverfly

“Nationalnyckeln” is a Swedish encyclopedia originally projected to describe all (sic) species of plants, animals and fungi found in Sweden. After a while, the Swedish government (which brokered the mastodon project) got cold feet and withdrew financing, forcing the publishers to discontinue after only 17 volumes. However, I recently learned that the project is up and running again, but at a slower pace than before, and it's not clear at the present time whether the ambition is still to cover all existing species, or simply to continue for as long as finances allow.

This volume, code named DH 53b, was published in 2009. It's the second of two volumes covering all species of hoverflies (Syrphidae) found in the Nordic countries. Hoverflies are the “nice flies”, who feed off flowers, don't infect you with any disease and even look somewhat aesthetically pleasing. They are sometimes known as flower flies. Indeed, that is the Swedish name (blomflugor).

This hoverfly volume includes 243 species of the subfamilies Ersalinae and Microdontinae. Rare guests are also covered. The illustrations are in color, and so are the photos. The species presentations are in Swedish, with very short English summaries. The identification keys are bilingual. Even if you don't understand the Swedish language, the hoverfly volumes are excellent collector's items. This could work even on your coffee table! Five stars.

Counter-revolutionary mosquitoes

The scary-sounding title of this work is "Blood-sucking mosquitoes of the subtribe Culisetina (Diptera, Culicidae) in world fauna". Even scarier, it was originally published in Leningrad in 1967 by A.V. Maslov. The English translation is from 1989, financed by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Science Foundation.

The foreword feels extremely "Soviet". Instead of scientific information, Maslov opens by pointing out that mosquitoes attacks labour brigades in Siberia and diminish their productivity. He has personally witnessed this during studies of the Eleventh Forest-Cutting Brigade in the Vyazensk district of Khabarovsk region. The same problem has also been documented from Arkhangelsk and the Karelian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Even worse, milk yields from collective farms get lower when the cattle are pestered by the blood-sucking insects. Maslov just can't admit that he's a nerd caught in his bug period!

But then, who wants to end up in Siberia?

The rest of the book is extremely boring and technical, although it seems to be about the actual mosquitoes...

Just remove the tyres

A review of "The Biology of Temporary Waters" by D Dudley Williams 

I spotted this book in "my" library the other day. I only skimmed it, but it looks extremely interesting!The "temporary waters" of the title include intermittent streams and ponds, episodic rain puddles, seasonal limestone lakes, the water-retaining structures of certain plants, and man-made container habitats. Watch out, they are all teeming with life! The author is pretty thorough, and no temporary water seems obscure enough to avoid his detection. The rain-filled cup of a mushroom is a "temporary water" and houses oligochaetes (a kind of worms). Rainfilled puddles in eastern Utah, Dry Creek in Oklahoma and large flower bracts of the genus Heliconia are also of considerabe interest. Waterfilled snail shells may house at least four species of rotifers, at least on Jamaica. On a more sinister note, 67% of water-filled snail shells in Tanzania were found to contain larvae of Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that spreads dengue fever. In the United States, rain-filled tyres (for instance at rural dumps in southeastern Illinois) are also veritable havens for mosquitos, in particular the notorious Asian tiger mosquito. However, if there's leaf-litter in the tyres, copepods might destroy 90% of the mosquito larvae. Why not just remove the tyres?! Somebody should notify the proper authorities in downstate Illinois...

OK, I admit I was fascinated.

However, this work is *not* a popularized work for the layman, but a serious and scholarly study. Chapter-headings include "Water temperature and turbidity", "Population dynamics" and "Importance and stewardship of temporary waters". Still, this is one of the few heavy scientific works I've seen which I'm actually prepared to buy and attempt to digest...provided somebody lowers the price!

A real page turner

At 1,505 pages, this is probably the most voluminous work I ever attempted to review here on Amazon. Forget about the family bible, the LA phone directory or the introductory guide to zoning law for here comes “Keys to the Insects of the European Part of the USSR. Volume V. Diptera and Siphonaptera. Part II”. Originally a Soviet work published in the city of our dreams, Leningrad, back in 1969, it was translated to hopefully proper English by the U.S. National Science Foundation in 1988. Edited by G Ya Bei-Bienko (the original) and George C Steyskal (the translation), it's apparently part of a potentially never-ending ultra-encyclopedia called “Keys to the Fauna of the USSR”, more specifically its 103rd volume.

Despite being very old, the work is still of considerable interest to the peculiar subsets of the scientific community known as dipterists and siphonapterists, respectively, since many of the included species have never been studied since the 1960's, when the Soviet original edition was published. Clearly, studying true flies or fleas wasn't the Soviet citizen's first choice of a career (the military-industrial complex or huge steel plants presumably being more lucrative). Yes, it's a scientific reference work dealing with these positively disgusting insects. “Volume V, Part II” covers the so-called higher dipterans (Diptera: Cyclorrhapha) and the fleas (Siphonaptera). I was somewhat shocked to learn that there are 6 families and a total of 160 species of fleas just in the European part of the USSR. As for illustrations, don't hold your breath – most of them show diagnostic characters such as antennae, wings, tarsi, etc. If you love the actual looks and intelligently designed body shapes of these unsavory critters, you are probably better off visiting the local farm…

Finally, the American editor discloses the ins and outs of translating books from Russian. The Russians have a peculiar way of indicating size (saying funny things such as “X is 1.75 times smaller than Y”) and also have two words for the color brown, korichevnyy and buryy, usually translated as “cinnamomeous” and “chocolate-brown”, but here simply rendered as “brown”, period. What a shame, I always wondered if the fleas pestering my tomcat were cinnamon-colored or chocolate-colored (or what region of the former USSR they originally hail from)…

Thank you Amazon for carrying this immensely stimulating work!

Mosquitoes from Moscow?

Please don´t ask me to spell out the full title of this landmark of really existing socialism...

This is the first part (1,233 pages long) of a two-volume scientific reference work, covering the true flies and fleas of Eastern Europe. Or, as the area was known back in the days, the European part of the USSR. Together, both volumes describe 8,300 species of Diptera and 160 species of Siphonaptera. This volume deals exclusively with the former, more specifically the subgroups known as Nematocera and Brachycera (Orthorrapha). Mosquitoes and horseflies are some of the “highlights”. Of course, this somewhat bizarre work (originally published in Russian) isn't suited for the general reader, consisting mostly of descriptions and illustrations of wings, legs or genitalia of various insects, since that's the only way to tell them apart from each other! Probably a must have for the entomology section of a scientific research library, but the general reader might do best to give it a pass…

To hover like a fly

In my book, the "D" in Diptera stands for DISGUSTING. Is there anything more obnoxious than blowflies, gadflies, robber flies, horse flies, mosquitos, crane flies, and, yes, house flies? Well, spiders perhaps. Or Roman emperors.

The only exception to the rule seems to be the hoverflies, known as flower flies in the US (and in Sweden). These are the NICE flies: their maggots often feed on aphids, they pollinate flowers, they are beautifully colored, and don't carry any diseases known to harm humans.

So how come there aren't more books about these friendly flies, I wonder? When I searched Amazon, most works on the Syrphidae - the scientific name of this group - turned out to be either extremely specialized, currently unavailable, or both. I only came across two vaguely popularized books, "Hoverflies" by Francis S. Gilbert, and "British Hoverflies" by Alan Stubbs and Stephen J. Falk. Both are more reasonably priced at the British version of Amazon, and none of them are as interestingly written as "Bees of the World", "The Magpies" and some other natural science books I reviewed. Still, if you are interested in hoverflies, and don't have access to a specialized enthomology library (I bet you don't), I guess this is where you have to start off your quest for the Holy Hoverfly Grail.

Since hoverflies are so ecologically important as pollinators and eaters of aphids, it's strange that no *really* popularized work exist about them!

Gilbert's "Hoverflies" is a very short book (only 66 pages), and only 35 pages contain information of interest to the general reader. The book sounds like a recruitment pitch for your local Young Enthomologists Association, and seems primarily directed at people who actually plan to make it a around-the-clock hobby to observe, catch or breed hoverflies. Also, the book was published in 1986 and is hence very dated.

Still, Gilbert does manage to make the reader interested in his subject. He mentions that some species of hoverflies migrate in large numbers from Britain to southern Europe through Switzerland, rather like birds or Monarch butterflies. I didn't know small insects like dipterans could migrate over long distances. Even more interesting, Gilbert suggests that hoverflies don't mimic bees and wasps. Most species are rather poor mimics, and at least one bird species, the Spotted Flycatcher, can easily distinguish hoverflies from wasps. Hoverflies that lay their eggs in nests of wasps or bumblebees are easily spotted by their host species, and killed unless they sneak into the nests at night, under the cover of darkness! Gilbert believes that the bright colors of the hoverflies serve some hitherto unknown function. But please note that the book was written over 20 years ago. What's the current theory on this subject, I wonder?

"Hoverflies" also cleared up some mysteries from my childhood, for instance why hoverflies endlessly hover in the air, suddenly attack other flying insects, and then return to the same spot. It's male hoverflies trying to catch females! The male hoverfly, rather stupidly, assumes that *any* passing insect is a hoverfly female, and hence tries to intercept it, realizing it's mistake only at the last possible moment. That weird, high-pitched sound in the forests also get its explanation: it's the hoverfly Syrphus ribesii "singing" while perching in trees or bushes. It's their way of keeping their body temperature high enough for sudden attacks against other insects, once again with the purpose to catch a female of the same species. (The book doesn't explain how insects sturdier than hoverflies might react to being bullied in mid-air.)

Gilbert also gives some short information on Drone Flies, hoverfly eggs and larvae, and the role of adult hoverflies as pollinators. It turns out that not all hoverflies feed on aphids when in their larval stage. Some actually prefer manure, cowdung or decaying wood. Some species spend their larval stage in polluted water! One species, Merodon equestris, live on onions and daffodils, and is hence considered a pest species. As already noted, a few species lay their eggs in wasp or bumblebee nests, feeding on the dead grubs and faeces of these insects! Somehow, this strikes me as typical fly behaviour...

This is a book that wants you to have more, but unfortunately the literature sections mostly include old articles in various specialized enthomology journals. Somebody must write that definitive natural history of hoverflies! Any takers?

PS. This book claims to be an identification guide to the hoverflies of Britain, but it's obviously incomplete, and all the color plates are pilfered from "British Hoverflies" by Alan Stubbs and Steven J. Falk. That book also covers more species.

These are the *nice* flies

Hoverflies (a.k.a. flower flies) are relatively small, brightly colored flies that live on nectar, don't sting, don't carry any tropical diseases, and play an important role as pollinators of flowers. They also espouse a variety of rather strange behaviour, including long-distance migrations, egg-laying in heavily polluted waters, and territorial defense. And they look like bees, wasps or bumblebees!

So how come there doesn't seem to be any popularized books on hoverflies???

When I searched Amazon, the only very vaguely popularized books that came up where "British Hoverflies" by Stubbs and Falk (this book), and "Hoverflies" by Gilbert. Both books are unreasonably over-priced here at Amazon.com, so please check out Amazon.com.uk instead. "British Hoverflies" can also be purchased from there (I did).

Please note that I said "very vaguely popularized". You probably have to be a not-so-budding hoverfly nerd to really like these books. And if you are, you probably have them in your backpack already! Gilbert's book contain some interesting information on hoverfly habits, but it's very short, more a pamphlet than a book. "British Hoverflies" is much longer but it's a very specialized identification guide. It's also very dated. My edition is from 1983. It covers all 250 British species, and illustrates 190 of them. The species presentations are rather short, and contain the following: a description of the traits necessary for identification, information about habitat and range, and approximate time of the year when the species in question flies. There is also an extensive identification key. The colour plates are all at the back of the book.

I'm sure the local dipterist enthusiasts somewhere in Kent or Somerset actually use this book. However, it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I wanted something about hoverflies along the lines of "Bees of the World" or "The Magpies", two natural science books I review elsewhere. It's a pity that the only *nice* flies don't have a popularizer (yet).

Any takers?

A world apart

A faux review of one of Amazon´s most obscure products, first posted on Dec 31, 2009. The book (or whatever it is) was titled "World species of biting midges (Diptera, Ceratopogonidae) (Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History)"

Why wasn't Red Dwarf included in this catalogue of biting MIDGETS?

:D

Of all weird publications distributed by Amazon.com, this is easily the weirdest one. And nastiest, too. Art Borkent has compiled a list of all known species of...biting midges. The list is 236 pages long and contains no species presentations whatsoever. It's just a long, never-ending list of Latin names, the only other information being the name of the unfortunate scientist who described the species in question, and where he found it (or was bitten by it).

That's all.

Thank God this work is available free on-line!

Going through the list, I was immediately struck by the fact that midges are quite literally EVERYWHERE. Micronesia, Chad, Sudan and Turkmenistan are some of the God-forsaken haunts where midges can be found. Which makes you wonder whether some scientist travelled all the way to the Sudan just to find midges? Or where they free-loading on a more financially viable operation, say oil drilling or shooting documentaries for the BBC?

The life of a dipterologist sure is an interesting one...

The names of the various midges are also pretty interesting. How about Nilobezzia atroxifemorata, Neosphaeromias afrotropicalis, Wannohelea huoqiuensis and Bezzia albuquerquei, plus a few others the Amazon filter won't let met spell out. Suggesting vernacular names for these bugs might be great fun! How about Jadis Queen of Narnia, State Congressman, First Blood or Poor Man's Mosquito?

The catalogue is topped with a reference section. Many references are to obscure magazines from behind the Iron Curtain, dealing with newly discovered midges from Siberia (Alexander Solzhenitsyn had other things to do).

Since there are no species presentations (wouldn't you like to know more about Jadis?), I couldn't find the only useful midge in the catalogue, the midge that supposedly pollinates cacao, making sure we get our chocolate!

Dipterology truly is a world apart...

Pretty fly for a White guy

I bought a used copy of this book from a third party seller. My copy came with the following hand-written note on one of the blank pages: "I read a review of this book in Science and was led to believe it would be a treasure trove of scientific information about dipteran flies. But it is a compilation of flies in literature, in poetry, in art and very little about the biology of flies. Very disappointed".

We can't say we haven't been warned...

But no, "Fly" isn't really a book about flies. The author, Steven Connor, is a professor of modern literature. He seems pretty well versed in ancient literature, too. The book is part of an apparently never-ending series on the cultural significance of animals, published by Reaktion Books. The series is very uneven, and should probably be taken with a large grain of salt...

"Fly" is an undigested compilation about how flies (mostly house flies) have been looked upon by various authors, poets, painters and even church fathers throughout the centuries. There is no real analysis of what all this means, probably because no real analysis is possible. Flies, it seems, always had a (surprisingly) mixed reputation. Sometimes they have been seen as evil or demonic, at other times as merely irritating, and still another angle is to look on them as proof of God's intelligent design of the universe.

In Christian culture, the fly was often connected to the Devil, no doubt because of Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies, a pagan god once worshipped by the Philistines. Beelzebub, of course, is mentioned in the Bible. Connor points out that this god might really have been an anti-fly deity. He was "lord" of the flies in the sense of being able to control them and make them go away! However, the reference was later misunderstood by Jews and Christians. However, Connor have also managed to find examples of a more positive view of flies within Christendom. When the French attacked the Spanish town of Girona in 1285 and desecrated the tomb of a local saint, a host of aggressive flies flew out of the tomb, repelling the invaders. Or so the story goes. Still today, the good people of Gerona celebrate the event by making fly-shaped chocolate candy.

Connor also mentions an unintentionally humorous conflict between the Christians and the Manicheans, a competing religion. The Manicheans believed that the material world was evil and therefore denied that it was created by God. They used the fly as an obvious example of an annoying, disgusting and useless creature with nothing godly about it. This put the church father Arnobius on the defensive. Like the Manicheans, he couldn't believe that God created the fly. However, he couldn't admit that the Devil created them either, since that would be conceding too much to his opponents. Arnobius was check mated. Augustine, on the other hand, took the bull (or fly?) bravely by its horns (or antennae?), declaring that the fly was indeed a divine creation. Later, the Muslims beat him to it, creating a legend about a fly that bore into the head of the evil ruler Nimrod, eventually killing him. When the fly emerged, it recited: "There is no God but God, Abraham is the apostle of God and his friend". That's *very* hard to believe...

From "Fly" we also learn that Goethe (!) studied the house fly scientifically, that the fly has been a symbol of everything from decay to sexual licentiousness in Western painting, or that the Hessian fly was used as a metaphor for unwanted alien immigration by the early American republic. There is also a reproduction of a poster from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, boldly proclaiming "The fly is as deadly as a bomber". Or what about the following quotes from a 1915 pamphlet on the house fly: "Arise! and slay the Fly, and by so doing conquer this mighty Microbe Army. A human being is dying every second of time somewhere in the world, stain by microbes carried by House Flies. Arise, ye slaves! and gut your ire." And further: "Therefore, Arise and Smite - slay without mercy. Let your battle cry be: Death to the Fly". Since the same author also gutted his ire against Blacks and poor Whites, one wonders what he was really after...

As I already pointed out, "Fly" isn't a particularly deep or analytical book. Still, if you have a friend who is an amateur entomologist and have the right sense of humour, it might still be a perfect birthday gift. I'd say Steven Connor is pretty fly...for a White guy!

Of maggots and men

During a stint in Australia, studying the local dung flies, Ferrar got a revelation. He realized that the superficially similar larvae of cyclorrhaphous Diptera were actually showing a wide variety of morphology and habits. After carefully reading the three-volume masterpiece "Die Larvenformen der Dipteren" by Dr. Willi Hennig and browsing over 2,000 relevant papers, Ferrar got another Damascus Road experience and decided to summarize all this knowledge (and then some) in a two-volume work all his own.

Thus was born "A guide to the breeding habits and immature stages of Diptera Cyclorrhapha. Ento-monograph volume 8". The first volume contains the text, the second contains figures. Both volumes together cover about 900 pages and should be sold under one cover.

And no, I'm not mocking the author. He really does say all of the above in an introduction. Well, sort of.

The book does indeed contain extremely detailed information on the immature stages of various flies, both the maggots and the puparia. However, there are also somewhat shorter presentations of the various families.

Yes, maggots. This is actually a book about maggots?!

It also includes some interesting information on the "grown ups". Apparently, flies of the family Coelopidae breed in stranded seaweed. After storms that wash up large amounts of such they may undergo a population explosion and achieve a temporary nuisance value in coastal resorts. However, in lieu of seaweed, coelopid flies can breed pretty much anywhere: penguin rookeries, the hollow in a discarded tooth of sea elephant (at least I hope it was discarded!), or elephant seal carcasses. Dead gulls work just as fine. Not to be outdone, the Conopidae are parasitic on honeybees and bumblebees. They are more choosy, however, than their coelopid cousins - all reports about conopid attacks on grasshoppers have proven false! Presumably, locusts aren't kosher if you're a conopid fly!

OK, I'm not sure how to rate this super-scholarly reference work on maggots, but eventually I award it four stars for the effort.

Who´s calling me maggot, punk?