BULLETIN OF THE Dipterists Forum Bulletin No. 69 Spring 2010 Affiliated to the British Entomological and Natural History Society Bulletin No. 69 Spring 2010 ISSN 1358-5029 Editorial panel Bulletin Editor Darwyn Sumner Assistant Editor Judy Webb Dipterists Forum Officers Chairman Stuart Ball Vice Chairman John Ismay Secretary John Kramer Treasurer Howard Bentley Membership Sec. Mick Parker Field Meetings Sec. Roger Morris Indoor Meetings Sec. Malcolm Smart Publicity Officer Judy Webb Conservation/BAP Officer Barbara Ismay Ordinary Members Chris Spilling, Alan Stubbs, Peter Boardman, Erica McAlister, Martin Drake Unelected Members BENHS rep. vacancy Dip. Digest Editor Peter Chandler co-opted Alan Stubbs Annual Subscription Recording Scheme Organisers Obtainable via subscription to Dipterists Forum: Cranefly Alan Stubbs & John Kramer Annual Membership (N.B. Overseas = £20 total) Fungus Gnats Peter Chandler Forum - £6 (includes Dipterists Bulletin) Hoverflies S.Ball & R.Morris Subscription to Dipterists Digest - £9 Larger Brachycera Simon Hayhow Contact Mr M. Parker, 9, East Wyld Road, Weymouth, Dorset, Tephritid Laurence Clemons DT4 0RP Email: [email protected] Sciomyzidae Ian McLean to whom all enquiries regarding delivery of this Bulletin should be addressed Conopid David Clements Empid & Dollies Adrian Plant Contributions Anthomyiidae Michael Ackland Dixidae R.H.L. Disney Please refer to the back pages of this Bulletin for details of how to Culicidae Jolyon Medlock contribute and send your material to both of the following: Sepsidae Steve Crellin Bulletin Editor: Darwyn Sumner Tachinid Chris Raper 122, Link Road, Anstey, Charnwood, Leicestershire LE7 7BX. Stilt & Stalk Darwyn Sumner 0116 212 5075 [email protected] Pipunculid David Gibbs Assistant Editor: Judy Webb Oestridae Andrew Grayson 2 Dorchester Court, Blenheim Road, Kidlington, Oxon. OX5 2JT. 01865 377487 [email protected] Dipterists Forum Website Dipterists Forum Forum www.dipteristsforum.org.uk/ www.dipteristsforum.org.uk/index.php Photographs: Front cover Hylemya vagans (Anthomyiidae) Les Butler, above Athericidae, Sciomyzidae, Darwyn Sumner. Cartoons from several sources. BULLETIN OF THE Dipterists Forum Contents Editorial .....................................................................................................4 News from the schemes.............................................................................5 NBN Gateway ............................................................................................6 Notice board .............................................................................. 8 BAP & Conservation ..................................................................................8 Conservation Issues ..................................................................................................... 9 Natural History Museum ...........................................................................9 Dipterists Forum ......................................................................................11 Membership Matters .................................................................................................. 11 Dipterists Digest ........................................................................................................ 11 Publications ................................................................................................................ 12 Meetings .................................................................................... 15 Reports .....................................................................................................15 Autumn Field Meetings .............................................................................................. 15 AES Annual Exhibition ............................................................................................... 18 Annual Meeting .......................................................................................................... 18 Forthcoming .............................................................................................26 Events Calendar 2010 ................................................................................................ 26 Invitation to a joint meeting of AK DIPTERA .............................................................. 26 International Congress of Dipterology ..................................................................... 27 Diptera Identification Workshops 2010 ..................................................................... 27 Additional Field Meetings 2010 ................................................................................. 29 And now ... ............................................................................... 30 Courtship .................................................................................................................... 30 How to contribute articles .......................................................................................... 30 Newsletters Anthomyiidae #8 Cranefly #20 Fungus Gnats #4 Hoverfly #48 Larger Brachycera #28 Oestridae #1 Sciomyzidae #5 Forum News Just think of it - detailed OS maps in your favourite recording Editorial packages, GPS devices and websites (OS OpenSpace) without having to pay a king’s ransom. Citizen Scientists “I’m a Citizen Scientist” is a popular claim these days, it has a Bee crisis - what crisis? nice formal ring to it that one could use when caught trespassing. I seem to have found a partial answer to the question about the I didn’t know I was one until Chris Thompson applied the term contribution that flies make to pollination, posed in Bulletin #67: to us at the AGM though I doubt the expression would help me if “Do plants depend on flies”, On 26th October New Scientist dis- I get caught waving my net around where I shouldn’t. cussed the very issue I had raised in an article by Marcelo Alzen People with strong backgrounds in Natural History belong to this and Lawrence Harder. It would appear that the release of a movie group, it seems. This is a peculiarly British passion too, Chris “Vanishing of the Bees” has created much of the current hand- showed dipterists’ activity plotted on a world map with hotspots wringing and the “crisis” is based on tenets that bees do most firmly centred on the UK and whilst there is a scattering on main- of the pollinating and that pollinators are declining worldwide. land Europe too, there’s very little systematic work anywhere else The authors tell us that the idea that bees are responsible for the in the world. production of a large proportion of our food is simply not true. Finally we are seeing some kind of acknowledgement of the con- There’s not a great deal of public awareness of this citizen scientist tribution of other animals (flies, butterflies, birds and bats) to fruit culture, for us its roots are firmly based on the famous philosophers and seed production in wild and cultivated plants in the popular of the past; even before the term “science” was adopted. Some press. It also transpires that yields in pollinator-dependent crops experience real surprise at discovering its existence for the first have increased steadily over recent decades so it seems Episyrphus time, Oliver Grafton of NBN expressed this rather nicely in his balteatus continues to do great work, let’s hope the popular press retirment letter (he now works as Senior Specialist in Biodiversity learns to distinguish it from a bee. Reporting for Natural England.) Is this culture disappearing or is it evolving? On the one hand we Puzzle picture have the continued pressure on the valuable institutions which encourage its study, the latest casualty being the Booth Museum of Natural History in Hove (Museums and Libraries are always first to be hit when savings are to be made) on the other hand we have NBN making the most of the opportunity to jump onto the Darwin bandwagon with their Darwin Guide to Recording Wildlife (see reviews). I’m afraid us naturalists don’t have sole claim to the term, we’re competing with amateur Astronomers and the like, one programme in the BBC Radio 4 documentary series “Citizen Science” has briefly dealt with some of the larger National Recording Schemes under the heading of “Conservation”. If anyone is conducting any dipterological project work this year, they might care to have a stab at R4’s “Material World” competition for the title “BBC Amateur Scientist of the Year” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/so- you-want-to-be-a-scientist/), they do mean us! can we nominate historical figures like the cobbler, Thomas Edward (Samuel Smiles “Life of a Scotch Naturalist”) Ordnance Survey - free at last! As a result of an online petition to the Prime Minister requesting “the Prime Minister to free UK Digital Mapping” (the “Free our Data” campaign) the Government has announced a new strategy for Ordnance Survey which will “make data more widely avail- able” and Ordnance Survey “will reform to ensure easier access Identify the 3 animal species involved to its high-quality geospatial data and services”. Well done all concerned, this has been a lengthy campaign and we’re now anxious to find out how we can benefit from it. To view the press release from Communities and Local Government, visit http:// www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1421671 dated 23rd December 2009 in which OS’s CE, Vanessa Lawrence tells us that amongst the possible range of free products are: ‘Raster’ products in a range of scales from 1:10,000 to 1:1 000 000 that