Live at the fly Olympics
Pete Boardman
Winston Churchill Fellow 2018
Live at the fly Olympics – Boardman, 2019
Alternative title – The dissemination of African craneflies housed in the Smithsonian Institution
Copyright © January 2019 by Pete Boardman
The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed in this report and its content are those of the author and not of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, which has no responsibility or liability for any part of the report.
Cover photo: cranefly from the collections of the Smithsonian Institution
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Contents
Executive Summary …………………..…………………………………………………………… 4
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 5
Background to the project – “Why craneflies?” ...... 5 Background to the project – “Why WCMT?” ...... 8 Background to the project – My bid ...... 9 Pre-travel blog ...... 9
Implementation …………………………………………………………………………………….10 Phase One – USA, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. …….…………..10 Phase Two – Southern Africa, International Congress of Dipterology, Windhoek, Namibia ……………………………………………………………………………….13
Results …………………………………………………………………………………………………15 Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. ……………………………………………..15 International Congress of Dipterology, Windhoek, Namibia ………………….17
Next steps ……………………………………………………………………………………………..19
Conclusions …………………………………………………………………. 19
Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………………………..20
Glossary………………….. …………………………………………………………………………21
About the author ………………………………………………………………………………….21 About the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust………………………………21……….
Appendix I – Results from time at the Alexander cranefly collection at the Smithsonian Institution ………………………………………………………………22 Appendix II – The author’s talk at ICD9 ………………………………………………….26
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Executive summary
Funding from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and the Frank Jackson Foundation enabled the author to travel to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. to use the Charles P. Alexander cranefly collection during October 2018, then to Windhoek in Namibia to disseminate findings at the International Congress of Dipterology (ICD9) (25th – 30th November 2018).
Studies in Washington D.C. led to the discovery of approximately 18 species of cranefly (daddy long legs) gifted to the author from Cameroon that were new to science, and a further 14 species that whilst known to science, were new to Cameroon, having not been recorded there before.
An outline talk describing the background to the project and the process of identification of fly specimens undergone in Washington D.C. was given as part of the International Congress of Dipterology (ICD9) in Windhoek, Namibia. The Congress was attended by 279 people from 61 countries and was the biggest scientific conference ever held in Namibia.
A range of talks in the UK are now planned to disseminate findings and learning amongst entomologists and others over the next 12 months.
Following the submission of this report the author will begin describing the new cranefly species to science, including one which will be named in honour of Winston Churchill to acknowledge the support of the WCMT, and publishing details of new species to Cameroon.
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Introduction
Background to the project – “Why craneflies?”
The first question I faced as I sat in the offices of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust visibly shaking before the interview panel on January 27th 2018 was “why craneflies?”
Why indeed? The background to my bid to WCMT began in 2008 when I worked for the environmental educational charity The Field Studies Council. At that time I was working on a cranefly distribution atlas of the English county of Shropshire (Vice County 40)1. This was a bold endeavour as there are few groups of insects outside of the more charismatic insect fauna (butterflies and dragonflies) that have sufficient knowledge available to make such assessments at county level. I had spent some time collecting specimens and identifying them in the grand tradition of the UK amateur entomologist and was now ready to start my atlas. This had come to the attention of a fellow entomological volunteer David Pryce, working on a different group of insects, who had recently been to Cameroon with the British Dragonfly Society as part of ongoing studies through the Cameroon Dragonfly Project2. The project had used Malaise Traps (flight interception traps) to catch insects at two sites near Mount Kupe in the Nyasoso District (Western Cameroon) and were looking for people to help identify the by-catch. He visited me with several tubes of craneflies that had been separated out of the catch and had been stored in 70% ethanol. He handed them over with the now much regaled comment – “here’s something for your retirement!”
At that time in my entomological development I was not sufficiently experienced to tackle them. Most entomologists who go on to work on international faunas go through a development process lasting at least a decade that starts with examining local or regional species, then national species, and then international species once they have mastered the fauna of their own country. I was then at the “local” stage in this development model. I suppose this is the entomological equivalent of the 10,000 hours of practice theory as popularised by Malcolm Gladwell3 and others. I therefore put the tubes in a drawer and promptly forgot about them.
Fast forward to 2014. I attended my first International Congress of Dipterology (ICD8) which was held in Potsdam, Germany. I’ve called this project ‘Live at the fly Olympics’ as these events are very like the Olympic Games. There is a bidding process that takes place. The event occurs every four years on a different continent, and attracts the best proponents in their particular fields of fly expertise. WCMT funded me to travel to ICD9 in Windhoek, Namibia, and ICD10 will be held in 2022 in Sacramento, California. Unlike the actual Olympic Games it is not marred by doping, bribery, and corruption, or at least not to my knowledge.
ICD8 in Potsdam was the moment I became an international dipterist and on my return home I decided to retrieve my Cameroonian flies and try to identify them. It soon became apparent that this was not going to be easy for reasons that will become evident within this report.
1 - Boardman, P. 2008. A Provisional Account of the Craneflies of Shropshire. Oswestry. Boardman 2 - https://dragonflyfund.org/images/reports/IDF_Report_04_komplett.pdf 3 - Gladwell, Malcolm, 1963-. Outliers : The Story of Success. New York :Little, Brown and Co., 2008.
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Fig 1 - Still frame from ‘Live at the fly Olympics’ GIF used in publicity for my WCMT project courtesy of ‘Inkvertebrate’
So why craneflies? Most people encounter craneflies (or daddy-long-legs as members of the public usually call them) once a year when they enter the house on a warm late August or early September evening and fly around the lights. There is often a short period of media frenzy associated with this annual event as I found out in my role as one of the Cranefly Recording Scheme’s organisers this year, and I subsequently spoke to the three journalists in a week about them, with the story syndicated to a national newspaper (who incidentally confused craneflies with spiders and harvestman in the space of a short column and exaggerated somewhat) (Fig. 2).
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5
Fig 2 – craneflies in the media
4 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-27206796 5 - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sex-crazed-daddy-long-legs-13252346
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Craneflies are an important group of flies that have can have an economic impact on grasslands; but they also are an important source of food for many birds and comprise a large part of the diet of starlings Sturnus vulgaris 6 and a whole range of other species, particularly upland birds and some of our more uncommon bats7. There is a minor role for a small number of craneflies in pollination, but this shouldn’t be overstated. 337 species occur in the United Kingdom and several are listed as extinct, threatened, or vulnerable and in need of conservation management or protection in the IUCN Status Review of Craneflies that is currently being drafted8. Generally the public are exposed to a single species, the common daddy long legs Tipula paludosa (see Fig. 3), and the 336 other species go about their business unseen or unnoticed.
Fig 3 - Tipula paludosa (photo: Pete Boardman)
Whilst in the UK and most of Western Europe we know a good amount about the cranefly fauna that resides here, such as the ecological requirements of species, and their distribution, we cannot say the same for much of the African fauna. There are several African countries without any known cranefly records, and most cranefly faunas are severely under-researched / under-worked. This is true of Cameroon which had a known list of 88 accepted species9 at the date of my Fellowship award. The most productive era of cranefly discovery was during the early to mid C20th when British, Belgian, French, and German dipterists were responsible for the majority of fieldwork undertaken. Many of these sent their cranefly specimens to the American cranefly taxonomist Charles P. Alexander for identification, of whom we will discover more shortly.
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Background to the project – “Why WCMT?”
It was suggested to me by my line manager at my current employer (Natural England) that I apply to the WCMT for a Fellowship to enable me to begin my study of Cameroonian and the wider Afrotropical species. There have been a number of successful applications by Natural England staff over the years and WCMT Fellowship is very much valued as a personal development opportunity.
Any study of African or world craneflies quickly encounters Charles Paul Alexander (1889 – 1981).
He is rightly referred to as the “father of cranefly taxonomy” and single- handedly set out world cranefly systematics and taxonomy. He described 95% of all African craneflies and authored over a thousand papers during his lifetime. In total he named around 11,000 species of craneflies and the “Alexander taxa” cover about 70% of all species named and some 46% of the genera and subgenera of the world10.
Fig. 4 - Photo (left) – Umass Archive, Amherst
When averaged out Alexander named a new species to science each day over his entire career, a remarkable achievement! Also surprisingly he never actually left the North American continent but instead received cranefly specimens from all over the world which he identified or named as new. What is often overlooked is the role played by his wife Mabel who supported him throughout his career and typed up a large proportion of his papers. When Mabel died in September 1979, Alexander's interest in craneflies died also, and he published little else after her death.
Fig. 5 - Photo (right). Charles and Mabel Alexander photographed outside their home (colloquially known as ‘Crane Fly Heaven’ in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1978 (Chen-Wen Young). Note – Americans refer to craneflies as crane flies (crane fly singular)
On his death his cranefly collection was taken by the Smithsonian Institution where it currently resides in the Museum Support Centre, Maryland, USA. Therefore anyone wishing to tackle African / Afrotropical species or most other biogeographic realms must access his collection, and papers. Fortunately most of his papers are available electronically through the Catalogue of the Craneflies of the World website (see reference 9). There is no single identification key to African / Afrotropical species but the recent publication of a key to the families of Afrotropical craneflies11 by Herman De Jong as part of
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Live at the fly Olympics – Boardman, 2019 the Manual of Afrotropical Diptera12 has made study possible at a family level and allows at least a start to be made.
Background to the project – my bid My bid to the WCMT was to visit the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. so that I might use the Alexander cranefly collection to enable me to identify my Cameroon specimens and therefore contribute to knowledge of this and the wider Afrotropical fauna. The second phase of my bid was originally to work at the Natural History Museum in London, however the author gratefully acknowledges the assistance by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and the Frank Jackson Foundation to enable a second phase to take place in Southern Africa. Phase two was amended therefore to enable me to attend the International Congress of Dipterology (ICD9) in Windhoek, Namibia to disseminate the results of my work in the USA.
Pre-project blog I set up a WordPress blog13 to start to advertise the fact that I had been awarded a WCMT Fellowship. I also wanted to use it to explain my project and my plans, as well as to run with the idea of the International Congress of Dipterology being similar to the Olympics, with the flies as the competitors. I maintained this conceit long enough to enable people to have an idea what my Fellowship was about. At the time of the publication of this report it had received 1,800 views by 575 individual visitors from 32 countries. I consider this a success when remembering my Fellowship concerns dead flies! I will keep my blog open and link my final report to it but plan no further posts other than that.
Fig. 5 – Blog header image from my WordPress blog page
6 - DUNNET, G.M. 1955. The breeding of the Starling Sturnus vulgaris in relation to its food supply. Ibis 97. 617-662 7 - STUBBS, A.E. (in prep). British Craneflies. BENHS. Dinton Pastures. 8 - BOARDMAN, P.J., KRAMER, J. & STUBBS, A.E. (in prep). A review of the status of Craneflies of Great Britain. Species Status No.xx. Natural England Commissioned Reports, Numberxxx. 9 - OOSTERBROEK, PJOTR. 2019 https://ccw.naturalis.nl/index.php 10 - OOSTERBROEK, PJOTR. On the 11.755 insect taxa named by Charles P. Alexander. Zoosymposia, [S.l.], v. 3, p. 9–15, dec. 2009. ISSN 1178-9913 11 - DE JONG, H. 2017. 14. Limoniidae and Tipulidae (crane flies). In. Nematocerous Diptera and lower Brachycera. Suricata. 5. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria. 12 – KIRK-SPRIGGS, A.H. & SINCLAIR, B.J. (eds). 2017. Manual of Afrotropical Diptera. Volume 2. Nematocerous Diptera and lower Brachycera, Suricata 5. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Pretoria. 13 - Live at the fly Olympics - https://wordpress.com/view/liveattheflyolympics.wordpress.com
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Implementation Phase One – USA – 01/10/18 – 25/10/18 Smithsonian Institution
Fig. 7 - African elephant in the atrium of the Museum of Natural History, Washington DC (Photo: Pete Boardman).
The Smithsonian Institution was established on August 10, 1846 "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge," and is a group of 19 museums, a zoological gardens, and research centres administered by the Government of the United States14. The Institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It employs just under 6800 people with a further 21,000 volunteers supporting them15. Whilst some insect collections are based at the Museum of Natural History, the Alexander cranefly collection is housed at the Museum Support Centre (MSC) in Maryland, a 25 minute shuttle bus ride south of downtown Washington D.C.
. Fig. 8 - The author stood outside the Smithsonian Institution Museum Support Centre on Wednesday 3rd October 2018 (Photo: Jon Gelhaus)
14 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_Institution 15 - https://www.si.edu/about
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The cranefly collection is made up of approximately 13,000 pinned species and 55,000 microscope slide mounted specimens16 ranging from full insects to a variety of body parts useful in identification (referred to by Alexander as “carcases”). I was initially met at the Smithsonian Institution Museum of Natural History by fly curator Torsten Dikow, who along with Jim Pecor arranged my access permissions to the collections. At the MSC I was met by Professor Jon Gelhaus (Fig. 9) of Drexel University, who had made the three hour journey from Philadelphia especially to meet me and show me around the collection. He is the de facto cranefly curator and was instrumental in the curation of the collection in its current form.
Fig. 9 - Professor Jon Gelhaus (Photo: Pete Boardman) Fig. 10 - Slide collection at the MSC (Photo: Pete Boardman)
Fig. 11 - Example of one of Charles Alexander’s slides showing his setting style and hand writing (Photo: Pete Boardman)
16 - OOSTERBROEK, PJOTR. On the 11.755 insect taxa named by Charles P. Alexander. Zoosymposia, [S.l.], v. 3, p. 9–15, Dec. 2009. ISSN 1178-9913
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Fig. 12 - Example of pinned specimens in the Charles Alexander collection at the MSC (Photo: Pete Boardman)
Fig. 13 - My work space at the MSC (Photo: Pete Boardman)
I chose not to take the actual cranefly specimens with me to the Smithsonian as already mentioned they arrived to me in 70% ethanol which is not air travel friendly. Instead I took detailed photographs of each individual specimen which I turned into PDF documents and
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Live at the fly Olympics – Boardman, 2019 took with me both in paper form and electronically, examples of which can be seen in Fig. 13. I aimed each “work” day to arrive at the MSC for 11am (a journey of just over an hour from my Washington accommodation via foot, Metrolink, foot, and the Museum shuttle bus) and left on the last shuttle back to downtown Washington at 5.40pm each day arriving back at my accommodation at approximately 7pm (for 12 days in total). I spent some time during my first few days getting to know the collection, especially those genera of craneflies that do not occur in the UK. Then I compared my specimens with African genera using Herman de Jong’s key and looked to match what I had with specimens in the Alexander collection. Sometimes this was a matter of selecting slides or pinned specimens from the known Cameroon list or from neighbouring countries such as Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), the Republic of Congo, and elsewhere in the Afrotropical region. Where possible I looked up Alexander’s original taxonomic description and compared it with the holotype or paratype specimen from the collection. Results from my work at the Smithsonian are detailed later in this report.
Phase Two – Southern Africa – 30/11/18 – 11/12/18 International Congress of Dipterology (ICD9), Windhoek, Namibia
Following my WCMT Fellowship award I applied to deliver a paper at ICD9, though I was at that time a little uncertain as to exactly what it might be. This was due to the tight timings between my visit to the Smithsonian and ICD9. Therefore discussions with the organisation committee were ongoing until quite late in proceedings and we decided to publish a fairly open abstract before I visited Washington (Figs.14 & 15).
Fig. 14 – ICD9 Programme with my talk scheduled for Wednesday 28th November 2018
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Fig. 15 – Abstract from ICD9 book of proceedings.
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Results
Smithsonian Institution
Following my time with the Alexander cranefly collection at the Smithsonian Institution I was able to identify the majority of specimens of the Cameroon material given to me in 2008. In total there were 123 specimens of which 23 remain currently unresolved. A total of 22 species were identified that are already known from Cameroon (see Table 1). Though already known many of these will only previously have been recorded from single locations. 13 species were identified as new to Cameroon. (Two further species need more work to confirm they are species new to Cameroon and are currently excluded from this report pending further investigation) – see table 2. In addition to this around 18 species from the sample are potentially new to science. Of these 11 are ready to be described and named, whilst 7 further species need more work to get to this stage.
Taxon Author Amphilimnobia leucopeza Alexander, 1920
Dicranomyia (Euglochina) connectans Alexander, 1920 Geranomyia macrops Alexander, 1919 Geranomyia ornatrix Alexander, 1926 Helius (Helius) flavitarsis (Alexander, 1920) Helius (Helius) submorosus (Alexander, 1921) Helius (Helius) subobsoletus (Alexander, 1921) Hovamyia venustipes (Alexander, 1920) Metalimnobia (Lasiolimonia) tigripes (Alexander, 1948) Orimarga (Orimarga) monilis Alexander, 1926 Pseudolimnophila (Calolimnophila) princeps Alexander, 1921 Rhipidia (Rhipidia) pallidipes Alexander, 1921 Styringomyia crassicosta (Speiser, 1908) Teucholabis (Teucholabis) nodipes Speiser, 1913 Tipula (Acutipula) bakundu de Jong, 1984 Tipula (Acutipula) camerounensis Alexander, 1921 Toxorhina (Ceratocheilus) cornigera (Speiser, 1908) Toxorhina (Toxorhina) taeniomera Alexander, 1950 Trentepohlia (Trentepohlia) fuscoapicalis Alexander, 1920 Trentepohlia (Trentepohlia) perpicturata Alexander, 1950 Xenolimnobia camerounensis Alexander, 1926 Table 1 – craneflies in Cameroon sample already on the Cameroon list
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Taxon Author Previously recorded from... Achyrolimonia recurvans (Alexander, 1919) Guinea, Nigeria Austrolimnophila (Phragmocrypta) fulani Alexander, 1974 Nigeria Gonomyia (Leiponeura) hyperion Alexander, 1956 Nigeria, Uganda Hexatoma (Eriocera) trichoneura Alexander, 1956 Uganda Hexatoma (Eriocera) tumidiscapa (Alexander, 1920) Liberia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe Limnophilomyia (Limnophilomyia) flavidula Alexander, 1976 Nigeria Limonia uniaculeata Alexander, 1956 Nigeria, Uganda Limonia woosnami (Alexander, 1920) Congo (Dem. Republic, former Zaire), Kenya, Uganda Medleromyia nigeriana Alexander, 1974 Nigeria Orimarga (Protorimarga) bequaertiana (Alexander, 1930) Liberia Pseudolimnophila (Pseudolimnophila) Alexander, 1963 Angola, Nigeria dundoensis Styringomyia sapobana Oosterbroek, Benin, Nigeria 2009 Toxorhina (Ceratocheilus) nigripleura (Alexander, 1920) Congo (Dem. Republic, former Zaire), Congo (People’s Republic, Gabon, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria Table 2 – craneflies new to Cameroon
As already stated, 23 specimens remain unresolved with either the genus known but the species as yet unresolved, or completely unresolved. Further work is needed on these specimens once the above have been published.
This means the Cameroon cranefly list can be increased from 88 known species at the time of my grant award to at least 112 species with further discoveries inevitable from unresolved specimens (potentially taking the list to 120). Interestingly and much to my surprise I found a variety of specimens from Cameroon that had been collected by a German collector, J. Reis, in the 1930’s that were never looked at by Alexander, or were perhaps set aside for further study at some point. This material is largely uncurated and resides in paper envelopes within three drawers within the collection (Fig. 16). There will be undoubtedly new discoveries and many interesting species within these samples.
Fig 16 – One of the drawers of as of yet uncurated material from Cameroon in the Alexander collection (Pete Boardman)
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Following my return to the UK from the Smithsonian I wrote up my ICD9 talk (See Appendix II). Looking back now at the time spent in the USA it was obviously an amazing time but to be honest quite a lonely one. My days in the lab at the MSC were spent largely on my own, with little opportunity for interaction with others. I think my travelling bursary was quite different to a lot of others in that the sedentary nature of the study – a single place of detailed study – that involved inanimate objects and was carried out in a windowless lab away from other people. I came to rely on WhatsApp messages from home as my only contact with people during this time and am thankful to the messages from work colleagues and the interaction with others through my blog and Twitter posts. I also now realise that on days off I gravitated to places full of people and attended busy museums, galleries, and sports venues. This presumably to make up for the long days of solitude with the collections – just me and thousands of dead craneflies in Alexander’s Amherst ‘Crane Fly Heaven’ transplanted.
ICD9 Windhoek
After my month in the USA I was fortunate to be accompanied by my partner to Namibia and South Africa. We arrived after the long flight just in time for the evening welcome session held at the venue, The Safari Court Hotel. It was interesting to look around the room and see people I recognised from ICD8 in Potsdam, Germany, and meet other colleagues familiar from the UK such as Erica McAllister from the Natural History Museum; Andrew Godfrey, one of the leading UK cranefly workers based in Scotland, and several others.
The following morning we attended the opening ceremony of the Congress which was introduced by organiser Ashley Kirk-Spriggs (Fig. 17) and then officially opened by the Hon. Deputy Minister for Environment and Tourism, Bernadette Maria Jagger.
Fig. 17 – Opening ceremony of ICD9, Windhoek (Pete Boardman)
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We then attended a number of interesting talks over the time of the Congress concerning many aspects of dipterology. In total there were four plenary talks, 23 symposia, 257 oral presentations and 57 poster presentations17. A total of 279 attendees from 61 countries attended and it was the largest scientific conference to be held in Namibia.
My talk went ahead as planned as part of the ‘Advances in Afrotropical Diptera’ symposium on Wednesday 28th November 2018, and was well attended. It led to discussions with fellow cranefly workers from Japan and Brazil, as well as an attendee from Cameroon who studied another group of flies but had come to see my talk as he was pleased to see his country being discussed (Fig. 18).
Fig 18 – Top - The authors talk and the author just prior to the talk (Vicky Gilson)
Bottom Left – (L to R) Takeyuki Nakamura (Japan), Jessica Gouvea Ferreira (Brazil), the author, Daicho Kato (Japan) (photo: Vicky Gilson)
Bottom Right – the author and Michelson Azo’o Ela (Cameroon) (photo: Vicky Gilson)
17 - https://www.namibian.com.na/73386/read/Flies-can-help--to-solve-crime
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Next Steps
A number of things need to be done now to make the most of the time spent in Washington and Windhoek, and to continue my personal development. I returned from the Smithsonian Institution collections with a number of questions about unresolved craneflies within the cohort of Cameroonian specimens. Some specimens need certain features checked that didn’t show up clearly enough in my photographs.
These are the next steps currently planned;
1) All new specimens to science need to be removed from the alcohol they are stored in and described in detail and photographed ahead of publication. 2) I need to seek advice regarding naming protocols for some species. 3) I need to seek advice on DNA barcoding of specimens. 4) The most appropriate journal to publish my findings needs to be selected. I currently have a few options. Once this is done; 5) Publish species new to Cameroon. 6) Publish species new to science that can be described now. 7) Re-visit the Smithsonian Institution for a short time to follow up questions raised on my last visit. 8) Publish any new species as a result of that visit as per 5 and 6. 9) I intend to name one of the new species after Winston Churchill in recognition of the support given by the WCMT. 10) Follow up contacts made at ICD9 with African and other world dipterists. 11) Supply photos of various species from the Alexander collections to the Catalogue of Craneflies of the World website. 12) I will be talking about my Fellowship at Shropshire Entomology Day in January 2019, and at the Dipterists Forum day and AGM in November 2019. Both talks will be titled ‘Live at the fly Olympics’. I will also be talking about my Fellowship at the next WCMT North West Association group meeting in March 2019. I will examine other options available to disseminate findings and my experiences to other audiences as they become available. 13) When all specimens are resolved and published I need to find a Museum in which to deposit them so that others may access them as voucher specimens / holotypes / paratypes
Conclusions
Despite what I have achieved during my project, I still remain amazed that the WCMT deemed such a niche area of study suitable for a Fellowship and I would therefore encourage others with similarly niche study areas not to hesitate in applying for such a life- changing experience. My year as a Fellow has been incredibly inspiring and even without the travel and the actual project itself, being associated with other WCMT Fellows present and past has been truly inspiring. As has the support and encouragement from WCMT and the Frank Jackson Foundation. Highlights outside of the travel were the Fellowship symposium at the beginning of my year, attending a North West Association meeting,
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Live at the fly Olympics – Boardman, 2019 making a brief film for the following one that I couldn’t attend due to my travels starting, and a reception at the House of Lords.
As already said, my Fellowship is probably quite different to many as it was very focussed mostly on a particular place and resource (the Charles P. Alexander collection), and therefore the array of people familiar with it at a professional level is very few. In many accounts of other Fellowships that I have read through blogs and reports I’ve seen how dynamic they can be, with multiple changes in project itineraries that opportunities dictate and a degree of flexibility that I did not have. I’ve already detailed earlier in this report the potential loneliness of this situation and how important having a network of people is, and available technology to enable this when overseas. This really is a modern problem I guess, as adventurers in history must have suffered terrible loneliness when away on different continents away from loved ones and colleagues. Nevertheless these feelings were in my case significant I had not anticipated them before my own travels.
My WCMT Fellowship is now a major part of the foundations for what comes next and the taxing process of publishing details of new species to science. I intend to capitalise all I can on this Fellowship and the potential opportunities it may present to work more on Afrotropical species, and become an authority on this group. I also hope that in publishing my work that resulted from the Fellowship I give opportunities for publicity to WCMT and the Frank Jackson Foundation. I certainly intend to keep in touch with my local Association and encourage others to apply for Fellowships.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the following people and organisations for their support, and inspiration prior to and during my WCMT project; Andrew Windrum, Rebecca Wheeler, and Vicky Gilson (Natural England), all colleagues in the Natural England Field Unit, Inkvertebrate for use of the fly Olympics GIF, David Pryce and Graham Vick (Cameroon Dragonfly Project), Erica McAllister and Duncan Sivell (Natural History Museum), Torsten Dikow and Jim Pecor (Smithsonian Institution), Jon Gelhaus (Drexel University), Andrew Fassbender (Rhithron Associates Inc), Sue Townsend and Rich Burkmar (Field Studies Council), Ashley Kirk- Spriggs and Burgert Muller (ICD9 organising committee). Most of all I wish to thank everyone at The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and Jenny Walker at the Frank Jackson Foundation for enabling me to undertake a life-changing experience!
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Glossary
Craneflies – an order of true flies known as the Tipuloidea made up of a number of families colloquially known as craneflies or daddy-long-legs
Cranefly Recording Scheme – the volunteer organization as part of the Dipterists Forum set up to record craneflies in 1973 by Alan Stubbs.
Diptera – the order representing the true flies; species with one pair of wings (sometimes absent) and a pair of halteres. One who studies flies is a dipterist and the study of flies is called dipterology
Entomology – the study of insects and other invertebrates. One who studies entomology is an entomologist
Holotype – A single type specimen upon which the description and name of a new species is based
Paratype – A specimen or specimens of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype.
About the author Pete Boardman is a field entomologist with the Natural England Field Unit. He is a co- ordinator with the Cranefly Recording Scheme and a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. He has authored two books on Craneflies, and teaches for Manchester Metropolitan University and the Field Studies Council. He once saw a slug eating a chip.
About the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust The WCMT awards Fellowships to UK citizens from all walks of life, regardless of background or education. They enable awardees to travel to learn covering seven universal themes in society: healthcare, education, the environment, technology, communities, culture and the economy. Awards fund individuals to travel for 4-8 weeks, anywhere in the world, researching a topic of their choice among global leaders in their field. The Fellowship was created by public subscription in 1965 as the living legacy of Sir Winston Churchill and has supported over 5,500 people to date. Find out more details on the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust website - https://www.wcmt.org.uk/
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APPENDIX
APPENDIX I
Specim Family Species Name Comment en No. 1 Tipulidae Nephrotoma sp. unresolved to species 2 Tipulidae Tipula (Acutipula) bakundu Known from Cameroon 3 Limoniidae Hexatoma (Eriocera) tumidiscapa New to Cameroon 4 Limoniidae Hexatoma (Eriocera) tumidiscapa New to Cameroon 5 Tipulidae Tipula (Acutipula) camerounensis Known from Cameroon 6 unresolved - allied to 44 7 Limoniidae Metalimnobia (Lasiolimonia) sp. new New to Science 8a Limoniidae Trentepohlia (Trentepohlia) perpicturata Known from Cameroon 8b Limoniidae Trentepohlia (Trentepohlia) sp. new New to Science 9 Limoniidae unresolved 10 Limoniidae Teucholabis (Teucholabis) nodipes Known from Cameroon 11 Limoniidae Metalimnobia (Lasiolimonia) tigripes Known from Cameroon 12 Limnophilidae New to Science 13 Limoniidae Ellipteroides sp? New to Science 14 Limoniidae Achyrolimonia recedens Known from Cameroon 15 Limoniidae Limonia woosnami New to Cameroon 16 Limoniidae Achyrolimonia recurvans New to Cameroon 17 Limoniidae Rhipidia (Eurhipidia) sp. needs further work but new to Cameroon 18 Limnophilidae New to Science 19 unresoved 20 Limoniidae Geranomyia ornatrix Known from Cameroon 21 22 Limoniidae Geranomyia macrops Known from Cameroon 23 unresolved - new to Science 24 Tipulidae Nephrotoma sp. unresolved to species 25 Limoniidae Hexatoma (Eriocera) brevifurca further checks needed - if confirmed new to Cameroon 26 Limoniidae Limonia (Afrolimonia) sp. new New to Science 27 Limoniidae Helius (Helius) subobsoletus Known from Cameroon 28 29 unresolved 30 Ptychopteridae Ptychoptera sp. unresolved 31 Limoniidae Hovamyia venustipes Known from Cameroon 32 Limoniidae unresolved 33 unresolved 34 Limoniidae unresolved 35 Limoniidae Trentepohlia (Trentepohlia) sp. new 2 New to Science
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36 Limoniidae Limonia uniaculeata New to Cameroon 37 Limoniidae Helius (Helius) submorosus Known from Cameroon 38 Limoniidae Pseudolimnophila (Pseudolimnophila) New to Cameroon dundoensis 39 Limoniidae unresolved 40 Limoniidae Gonomyia (Leiponeura) hyperion New to Cameroon 41 Limoniidae Baeoura sp. new New to Science 42 Limoniidae Geranomyia macrops Known from Cameroon 43 Limoniidae Atypophthalmus sp. unresolved to species 44 unresolved - allied to 6 45 Limoniidae Limonia (Afrolimonia) sp. new New to Science 46 Limoniidae Helius (Helius) subobsoletus Known from Cameroon 47 48 Limoniidae Limonia sp. unresolved - think new to science 49 Limoniidae Achyrolimonia recurvans New to Cameroon 50 51 Limoniidae Achyrolimonia recurvans New to Cameroon 52 53 Limoniidae Geranomyia macrops Known from Cameroon 54 Limoniidae Elaphantomyia sp. new New to Science 55 56 Limoniidae Orimarga (Protorimarga) bequaertiana New to Cameroon 57 Limoniidae Geranomyia macrops Known from Cameroon 58 Limoniidae Limonia woosnami New to Cameroon 59 60 currently unresolved 61 62 63 64 Limoniidae Dicranomyia (Euglochina) connectans Known from Cameroon 65 Limoniidae Hexatoma (Eriocera) brevifurca ? further checks needed - if confirmed new to Cameroon 66 Limoniidae Orimarga (Orimarga) monilis Known from Cameroon 67 unresolved 68 69 70 Limoniidae unresolved 71 72 Limoniidae Hovamyia sp. more work needed 73 Limoniidae Limnophilomyia (Limnophilomyia) New to Cameroon flavidula 74 75 Limoniidae Toxorhina (Toxorhina) taeniomera Known from Cameroon 76 Limoniidae Toxorhina (Ceratocheilus) nigripleura New to Cameroon
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77 78 Limoniidae Orimarga (Orimarga) monilis Known from Cameroon 79 Limoniidae unresolved 80 81 unresolved 82 Limoniidae Hovamyia sp. new New to Science 83 Limoniidae Hexatoma (Eriocera) trichoneura New to Cameroon 84 85 Limoniidae Pseudolimnophila (Calolimnophila) Known from Cameroon princeps 86 Limoniidae Amphilimnobia leucopeza Known from Cameroon 87 88 89 Limoniidae Limonia (Afrolimonia) sp. new New to Science 90 91 Limoniidae Limonia (Afrolimonia) sp. new New to Science 92 Limoniidae unresolved 93 Limoniidae Dicranomyia sp. unresolved 94 Limoniidae Medleromyia nigeriana New to Cameroon 95 Limoniidae Helius (Helius) flavitarsis Known from Cameroon 96 97 Limoniidae Toxorhina (Toxorhina) taeniomera Known from Cameroon 98 99 100 unresolved - new to Science 101 Limoniidae Rhipidia (Rhipidia) pallidipes Known from Cameroon 102 103 104 105 Limoniidae Dicranomyia sp. unresolved 106 107 Limoniidae Toxorhina (Ceratocheilus) cornigera Known from Cameroon 108 Limoniidae Xenolimnobia camerounensis Known from Cameroon 109 Limoniidae Trentepohlia (Trentepohlia) fuscoapicalis Known from Cameroon 110 unresolved 111 Limoniidae Styringomyia sp. more work needed 112 Limoniidae Austrolimnophila (Phragmocrypta) fulani New to Cameroon 113 Limoniidae Pseudolimnophila (Calolimnophila) Known from Cameroon princeps 114 Tipulidae Dolichopeza sp. new New to Science 115 116 unresolved 117 Limoniidae Styringomyia crassicosta Known from Cameroon 118 Limoniidae Styringomyia sapobana New to Cameroon 119 Limoniidae Styringomyia sp. more work needed
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120 Limoniidae Styringomyia sp. more work needed 121 Limoniidae Thaumastoptera sp new New to Science 122 Limoniidae unresolved 123 Limoniidae unresolved
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APPENDIX II – ICD9 Talk
part of the Fly Olympics GIF
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