Posted in Insect Links, Photography Links, tagged diptera, entomology, Flies, mosquitoes, Photography on May 12, 2009| 3 Comments »
Eastern Treehole Mosquito
My commercial gallery now has flies!
Diptera photographs at alexanderwild.com
I feel sort of embarassed at how few fly images I have, considering the importance of the group. That’s something I’ll try to remedy as we get into this summer’s photography season.
Posted in arizona, Insect Links, tagged diptera, entomology, Flies, Insects, Nature, Photography on December 31, 2008| 11 Comments »
A long-tongued horse fly takes a sip of nectar in Arizona's Chiricahua mountains.
100% crop of the same image.
photo details: Canon 65mm MP-E 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
Posted in fun, tagged diptera, Flies, Insects, macrophotography, Nature, Photography, Rhagoletis on November 25, 2008| 1 Comment »
Rhagoletis fruit flies mating, Arizona
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 200, f/11, 1/200 sec, backlit by handheld strobe.
Posted in beetles, Insect Links, Photography Links, Science, tagged coleoptera, diptera, entomology, Flies, Nature, slime flux on November 14, 2008| 2 Comments »
Nosodendron californicum – Wounded Tree Beetle
California, USA
From the Department of Really Obscure Insects, here’s a beetle that few non-specialists will recognize. Nosodendron inhabits the rotting tissue of long-festering tree wounds. These beetles are not rare so much as specialized to an environment where few entomologists think to look. If you can spot the telltale stains of an old wound on the trunks of large trees, you should be able to find Nosodendron. They feed on the microbes- the yeast and bacteria- that grow in the sap leaking from the phloem.
There are, in fact, whole communities of insects associated with tree wounds. Several fly families are found nowhere else. I photographed this odiniid fly drinking from the yeasty slime:
photo details (both photos): Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS D60
ISO 100, f/13, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
Posted in Insect Links, Science, Taxonomy, tagged diptera, Drosophila, fruit fly, pharyngula, politics, sarah palin, tephritidae on October 26, 2008| 11 Comments »
A True Fruit Fly - Tephritidae
Fruit flies are a family, Tephritidae, containing about 5,000 species of often strikingly colored insects. As the name implies, these flies are frugivores. Many, such as the mediterranean fruit fly, are agricultural pests.
Drosophila melanogaster, the insect that has been so important in genetic research, is not a true fruit fly. Drosophila is a member of the Drosophilidae, the vinegar or pomace flies. They are mostly fungivores, and their association with fruit is indirect: they eat the fungus that lives in rotting fruit. Some pointy-headed geneticist started using the wrong common name for them a century ago, and legions of geneticists unfortunately followed suit. Now when someone says “fruit fly” we have no way of knowing what sort of insect it is without additional context.
I bring this up because the confusion between fruit flies and vinegar flies entered into U.S. presidential politics this week when Sarah Palin attacked Fruit Fly spending as wasteful:
Posted in Blogging, Insect Links, Photography Links, tagged diptera, entomology, Flies, midge, Nature on September 24, 2008| 6 Comments »
Can’t devote much to blogging at the moment, but since we’re feeling sorry for the dipterists this week here’s a fly for you to look at:
Gall Midge, Cecidomyiidae - California
Maybe one of you fly folks could explain in the comments why Cecidomyiids are so cool. Aside from looking like little fairies, that is.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60
ISO 100, f/13, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
Myrmecos Blog 