Drain flies spark a lumper/splitter debate

You've likely seen them in your bathroom or at a public toilet: drain flies in the family Psychodidae. They flit from wall to wall where they cling like flecks of dust. Their hairy wings, antennae, and bodies are cute or scruffy, depending on your point of view. Barb Sharanowski featured one species on the North Carolina Insect Museum's Insect of the Week. Her post brought comments by taxonomists talking about which taxonomic concept should be accepted for this fly: Telmatoscopus albipunctata Williston, 1983 or Clogmia albipunctata (Williston, 1983). This species was sequenced for the FLYTREE project.

Dr. Art Borkent, biting midge expert, featured

Known as the world expert on the systematics of families of midges (small, often annoying flies that may bite), Art Borkent was featured in Spotlight our Taxonomist in the journal Zootaxa. He was awarded the prestigious J.O. Westwood Medal for Excellence in Insect Taxonomy by the Royal Entomological Society, in partnership with the Natural History Museum in London, for his monograph on The Frog-Biting Midges of the World (Corethrellidae: Diptera), which was published in Zootaxa.

In the Year of Darwin, Darwin Core Standard Ratified!

The TDWG Executive Committee announces the official ratification of Darwin

Core (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/index.htm) as a TDWG standard.

Darwin Core joins four other TDWG standards- http://www.tdwg.org/standards/

that provide a reference for sharing information about biodiversity. Lead

author, John Wieczorek, and his co-authors, Markus Döring, Renato de

Giovanni, Tim Robertson, and Dave Vieglais have done an amazing job in

writing, organizing, and dealing with feedback during the review process. We

can only have a small insight into the effort that John and his team have

invested in Darwin Core.

We also appreciate the work that Gail Kampmeier has done as Review Manager

since her appointment in February 2009. There was an initial peer review

followed by two months of public review, punctuated by ongoing discussions

and periodic updating of the draft standard now being ratified by the TDWG

Executive Committee.

John, Markus, Renato, Tim, Dave and Gail deserve contributions of good

French wine in Montpellier! Thank you and congratulations to all who

contributed.

Donald Hobern, Chairman, TDWG.

Naming Genes: What's in a Name?

In 1594, Juliet asserted in Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet" and certainly words have layers of meanings and associations that not only Shakespeare could devise. And so it is with those naming genes, on the forefront of which are those looking at fly genes, particularly of Drosophila in FlyBase. In this delightful report from the BBC World Service's Discovery, we find out what these scientists are really thinking about as they sort through piles of flies, looking for visual verification of potential genetic anomalies: how might they name their next big discovery. Traditions are born in various laboratories for the sometimes quirky, usually informative names bestowed upon new discoveries--will the gene naming equivalant of the Académie française clamp down on this populist movement? The fly geneticists say no!

Thanks to Karyla for this great find!!

7th International Congress of Dipterology

The first announcement for the 7th International Congress of Dipterology (or IDC7 for short) was just released and the venue and program promise to be spectacular! The Congress Chairman, FLYTREE's own David Yeates, welcomes conferees to the first Diptera Congress in Latin America, from 8-13 August in San Jose, Costa Rica. Manuel Zumbado chairs the organizing committee for this event that will draw those interested in flies from across the globe.

FLYTREE scientists identify the closest relatives of the flies!

FLYTREE scientists resolve holometabolan insect phylogeny and identify the closest relatives of the Diptera

Wiegmann, B. M., M D. Trautwein, J. Kim, M. Bertone, S. L. Winterton, B. K. Cassel, and D. K. Yeates. (2009). Single-copy nuclear genes resolve the phylogeny of the holometabolous insect orders. BMC Biology 7:34.http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/7/34

A new paper published this month by FLYTREE ATOL scientists proposes a new phylogeny among the holometabolous insect orders and places Diptera as sister group to the Mecoptera  + Siphonaptera.  

Combined nucleotide data from 6 nuclear genes provides strong evidence for an early split between Hymenoptera and all other Holometabola and places the Strepsiptera as sister group to beetles (Coleoptera), arguing against previous molecular and developmental hypotheses.

These new data are used to estimates the evoutionary age of splits among the major insect orders including Diptera.. which had their origin in the Permian or earliest Triassic approximately 255 mya.

These exciting results are featured on the 'front page' of BMC Biology and are accompanied by an essay by Dr. Alessandro Minelli on the importance of robust phylogenetic understanding for accurate interpretation of developmental pathways and patterns.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/7/36

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.