Supertrees & the Tree of Life

Just published in Invertebrate Systematics is the journal's featured paper:

Lambkin C.L., Trueman J.W.H., Yeates D.K., Holston K.C., Webb D.W., Hauser M., Metz M.A., Hill H.N., Skevington J.H., Yang L., Irwin M.E., Wiegmann B.M. (2009) Supertrees and the Tree of Life: generating a metaphylogeny for a diverse invertebrate family (Insecta : Diptera : Therevidae) using constraint trees and the parsimony ratchet to overcome low taxon overlap. Invertebrate Systematics 23, 171–191.

See the abstract at http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/120/paper/IS08035.htm and don't forget to also check out the beautiful cover of this issue, which sports J. Marie Metz's amazing illustration of a xestomyzine therevid, Henicomyia sp., from Guatemala.

Contact Christine.LambkinATqm.qld.gov.au for a copy of this landmark paper.

Milichiid flies caught mugging ants

Who knew flies could be thugs? Once again, Alex Wild has caught flies in the act, this time robbing ants of their food in Kwazulu-Natal. Read the details and see the marvelous photography in this blog post, which features FLYTREE collaborator, Irina Brake, as the Milichiidae expert!

Phorid Flies Provide Death from the Skies

Featured in ScienceBlog's first monthly rotating photo blog, Photo Synthesis, is Alex Wild, whose photography of the insect world, and ants in particular is worthy of insect centerfolds. In this particular entry, he captures phorid flies (Pseudacteon sp.) trolling a fire ant colony for a candidate whose head will roll...

Diptera Diversity: Status, Challenges and Tools

Published today, this new 460 page book, Diptera Diversity: Status, Challenges and Tools was edited by Thomas Pape, Daniel Bickel, and Rudolf Meier and features chapters by many of the FLYTREE principal investigators and collaborators. The concept for this much anticipated book grew out of the 2002 International Congress of Dipterology in Brisbane, Australia. It features sections on regional diversity of Diptera fauna; case studies, ecological approaches & estimation; and bioinformatics and dipteran diversity (pdf of table of contents).

Drosophila or Sophophora?

"One interesting high impact dipterological discussion popping up on science news sites is the nomenclatural snafu that is Drosophila melanogaster. In a sentence, if melanogaster Meigen was not a model organism but still was part of a modern systematic revision, it would not be in the genus Drosophila." ...

So begins a post by Keith Bayless in the excellent North Carolina State Insect Museum blog. Check out the rest of the article about this controversy of one of the work horses of the arthropod world!

2009 Field Meeting of the North American Dipterists Society

Mark your calendars for the 2009 NADS Field Meeting! The Meeting will be held from 1-4 June 2009, based in Crescent City, California, organized by Peter Kerr and the rest of the dipterists (Steve Gaimari, Martin Hauser, Alessandra Rung) at the California Department of Food and Agriculture in Sacramento. Laboratory and presentation facilities will be provided by The College of the Redwoods, Del Norte campus, in Crescent City. Participants making flight arrangements are advised to fly into Arcata, CA (ACV; 1 hour south of Crescent City), Medford, Oregon (MFR; 2 hours northeast of Crescent City), or Eugene, Oregon (EUG; 4 hours north of Crescent City), then arrange for a rental car. Crescent City is approximately 6 hours north of San Francisco, California. The area is surrounded by a number of protected areas including Tolowa Dunes State Park, Lake Earl State Wildlife Area, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Contact the organizers (below) for details about accommodations. The meeting registration fee is $20/person, and $10/accompanying person if they will be attending group functions. Please contact Peter Kerr (pkerr@cdfa.ca.gov) or Steve Gaimari (sgaimari@cdfa.ca.gov) as soon as possible if you intend to come to the Meeting, and if you would like to give a presentation on current research topics or activities involving Diptera. We hope for a lively set of presentations, as well as fantastic collecting in this beautiful part of California! More details will be given in the April issue of Fly Times, but by then time will be tight!

FLYTREE joins EDIT's The (new) Diptera site

The FLYTREE project has become a group within the EDIT (European Distributed Institute for Taxonomy) Diptera Exemplar, taking advantage of EDIT's aim at unifying revisionary taxonomy on the web. FLYTREE collaborator, Irina Brake, with EDIT at the Natural History Museum, London, is coordinating both the Diptera and Insect exemplars. Much of the content from F. Christian Thompson's pioneering Diptera.org has now moved to form the core of The (New) Diptera Site. Image galleries feature stunning photos by Steve Marshall as well as photos of BMNH dipterists in 1974. Registered users from the Diptera community can add to or modify existing content, import a bibliography, start a conversation about taxonomic concepts in the forum, create an image gallery, and disseminate knowledge about their favorite groups of Diptera. Guests can browse contributed content and read fly-related RSS news feeds aggregated from uBio.

This collaborative environment for "getting biodiversity on the web" is called a Scratchpad. It has a sandbox or trial area for experimenting while you learn the system, as well as helpful training videos illustrating features of this Drupal-based content management system.