Selenochlamys ysbryda

Way too many things stopping me from posting at the moment, from my computer dying completely (thankfully it turned out that I only needed to reset the bios to repair it) to major, if welcome, distractions. I'm sure that things will settle down eventually, but for now I'm anticipating ants taking a back seat. I know: it truly is a scary thing to consider.

Back in July I reported on a species new to science from the UK, the ghost slug Selenochlamys ysbryda.

One of my new colleagues saw something last year that he claimed to be a ghost slug right outside of our office building in Talgarth, but wasn't able to get Cardiff Museum to verify it without a photograph. Last week, having given up hope of finding another one, he found it again in the same spot. Again, no one could find a camera, so I picked it up, took it home and now have a pet slug.

So here it is! The photograph below was confirmed by Ben Rowson at Cardiff Museum as S. ysbryda, who also stated that Talgarth is the furthest north that this species has been found (though Brecon comes a close second). The other verified records are from Caerphilly, Cardiff, Gorseinon and Newport, so it's evidently not been widely found yet. I shall be looking out for it in my garden in Bronllys, about two miles further north.


I shall be taking this specimen, and any others that I find, to Cardiff Museum, to assist with their research on the species. Until then it'll be feeding on worms from my garden.

New year, new home, new job, new species

Apologies for the lack of recent posts. I moved at the end of November to start a new job in Talgarth, Wales. Following my move it took my ISP a whole month to set up my connection here, with a lot of extended phone calls and a rather long and comprehensive written complaint from me to get them to sort it out as quick as they did. Needless to say I am not best pleased with the company.

One rather important event that took place over the last month was that my recent paper was published, describing a new species, Monomorium subcomae. It may not be much, but it is my first new species. (I don't have the time or resources to conduct large scale taxonomic reviews. At the time I did the M. subcomae work I was working off of a table in my kitchen - at least now I have a dedicated office/lab.)

The type material for M. subcomae was collected in Kuwait by David M. King, though Mostafa Sharaf has already informed me that he has the species from Egypt. The specimens gradually found their way to me through Brian Taylor, along with numerous other tubes from around the Mediterranean.

M. subcomae is one of many species in the Middle East and North Africa that are related to Monomorium areniphilum, all of which have a propodeum that it on a distinctly lower plane than the promesonotum, as well as large eyes and distinctive striate sculpture on the head. Not many of the areniphilum-complex are bicoloured, so this makes M. subcomae relatively easy to identify. The key in Collingwood & Agosti (1996) can be easily adapted to include M. subcomae as follows:

17	Eyes large, greater than 0.25 times HW		17a
	Eyes small, 0.25 times HW or less		18
17a	Ventral surface of head with numerous long setae		subcomae
	Ventral surface of head glabrous		venustum

As yet nothing is known about the ecology of M. subcomae. Perhaps over time people like Mostafa will be able to fill in some of the details.


Citation and abstract: Lush, M. J. 2008. A new species of Monomorium (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Kuwait. Zoology in the Middle East 45: 67-72.

Another picture from Cromhall

I was concentrating on the sawfly at the time, but I think it is the fly that draws the eye in this photograph. I don't think I realised how attractive it was at the time - it's just a fly after all.

I think the sawfly is a species of Athalia (see comment). At one point it would have been easy to identify it as A. rosae, but it appears that there may have been some revisions to the genus. My best guess is that this common Athalia is now known as A. circularis, but it's not clear as my books don't adequately cover sawflies and most of the internet sources evidently haven't caught up. Perhaps someone can tell me?

Things that aren't wasps

Though it wasn't my intention to begin with, this neatly follows on from Bug Girl's posts Things that aren’t bees (#1) and (#2).

One of my colleagues spotted both male and female Phasia hemiptera along the road at work, so the next day I brought in my camera to try to get some photographs of what is probably one of the UK's prettiest flies. I've since discovered that very few photographs of P. hemiptera do justice to the iridescent blue on the wings, so I don't feel quite so bad about failing to get any photographs over two consecutive days.

Instead I spent my time photographing the abundance of other insects, mainly on hogweed Heracleum sphondylium. Chief among these were hoverflies (Syrphidae), including the species below. Now that colder weather is setting in I'm getting around to dealing with the images.

I'm not an expert and I did not get any of the hoverflies photographed under a microscope, so don't rely on these identifications!

The most abundant hoverfly was Syrphus. I'm certain that I saw female Syrphus ribesii, so I'm assuming that this male (right) is also S. ribesii.

Also present on one day was a male Syrphus with a twisted abdomen (left). Sadly it did not pose especially well, but the shot does show the distorted abdominal tergites. I thought at the time that it might be a stylops, but they do not appear to parasitize flies at all.

Rather similar, but not as common, was Dasysyrphus albostriatus. The individual to the right is a female and shows the distinctive lines on the thorax that provide its name.


Probably the prettiest species present with regular stripes on the abdomen was Eupeodes luniger. This female (left) looked like a flying jewel in the sunshine, with a bluish sheen to the black areas on the abdomen.

Scaeva pyrastri (male, right) has more white or cream coloured stripes on the abdomen.

Another very common hoverfly in the UK, so common in fact that it has a English name, is the marmalade hoverfly Episyrphus balteatus (male left). This is possibly one of the most distinctive hoverflies in the UK, due to the overall shape and the double stripes on each abdominal tergite.

Also very distinctive is Chrysotoxum bicinctum, as it seems to be the only British species with two stripes on the abdomen as shown on the female on the right. I think that C. bicinctum is one of the few species that does a convincing job of looking like a wasp. This is on yarrow Achillea millefolium, rather than hogweed.

Finally, there was Xylota sylvarum. If I had seen this before then I obviously haven't been paying enough attention, as it is large, glossily hairy and attractive, if a little lumbering (there is also the smaller but similar X. xanthocnema). I fell in love with this female so there are two photographs (below, left and right)!

Entomophthora muscae

The largest part of the autumn fungus fruiting season may have passed in the UK, or at least where I live, but there are still a few things around, if you're prepared to look closely for them.

Yes, it's a fly (I don't know which species), but it is a fly with a fungal parasite, Entomophthora muscae. The fungus grows inside the fly, eventually reaching the fly's brain and influencing its behaviour. The fungus needs to get as high as possible to ensure reproductive success, so it forces the fly to climb to the top of a flower, twig or, as in this case, blade of grass and then makes it hold tight. In some cases I've even seen fungal hyphae around the flies proboscis and legs where the fungus has apparently anchored its host (though I suppose this could be a secondary infection in older specimens). The fungus then kills the fly and bursts through its abdomen to shed its spores. These spores are picked up by the wind to infect the next generation of flies.

E. muscae isn't rare by any means, but it does seem to be overlooked. It also seems to be most abundant as it starts to get wetter in autumn, so I find it most years at about this time. Nevertheless, I have very rarely found as perfect a specimen as this.

I know there won't be many others who share this opinion, but I do think that E. muscae is rather awesome.

Blog Action Day: Poverty

This year Blog Action Day is about poverty. 'Keep your post related to your regular blog topic' they say.

However, linking ants to poverty seems impossible. The best I could come up with was a video criticism of a Neocon version of the parable of the ant and the grasshopper which, whilst true, is not exactly interesting or relevant. So I'm moving up to the overarching theme of biodiversity, as there are many links between biodiversity and poverty.

Money is so often made at the expense of the natural world, most often not by locals, who are exploited just as badly as the environment in which they live. However, it doesn't always have to be like this. Anyone who's been watching Bruce Parry's Amazon (which should be everyone, as it's brilliant) will know about the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve, within which local communities are encouraged to live sustainably. The local communities feel that being part of the programme operating within the reserve benefits them and increases their quality of life.

Last year, the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) published a report entitled Biodiversity and Poverty Reduction; The importance of biodiversity for ecosystem services. I'd recommend reading the summary of this report at least. It lists some of the ecosystem services on which the poor are particularly dependent, including:

• 'Varied diet (including flavourings and micronutrients), famine foods and food security - provided directly by components of biodiversity that are consumed, and through a wide range of biodiversity that is crucial for food production, including that involved in the services of pollination, pest and disease control, and soil fertility.
• Water quality and availability (including regulation of flooding events), and erosion control - affected variously by vegetative cover at local and landscape scales.
• Medicines and health, both through the supply of natural medicines, and through the regulation of infections and emerging diseases.
• Cultural values, closely tied in many societies to components of biodiversity, typically at the species or landscape level.'

Source: UNEP-WCMC - Biodiversity and Poverty Reduction

One of the main points that the report makes is that the rich can 'buy-in' services when ecosystems stop providing them. The poor cannot do this, so are much more dependent upon greater diversity through a heterogeneous local environment.

Combating both poverty and the loss of biodiversity are two of the greatest challenges to face us in the 21st Century, so it is good that the two are not mutually exclusive. What will probably have to change are current economic policies, as these generally operate at the expense of the poor and biodiversity - though, given the current global financial crisis, maybe now is the time for significant change anyway. Ultimately, we as citizens of rich nations have to make a decision about which is important: other members of our species and the world in which we live, or money. Only one of these will not matter when we are gone.

Absolute genius

This is The BossHoss. Really gimmicky, but genius nonetheless.



If that's not enough, check out their versions of 'Hey Ya!', 'Toxic' and a number of other covers. Before there are any accusations of selling out (which might otherwise be justified) I should point out that they're German.