Mike Mostovski has a new position in South Africa (see Directory, below), where he can make big inroads in the all too poorly known African fauna. Congratulations, Mike!

What’s new in Los Angeles

This is a report on what we have been doing in the LACM over the last couple of years (since the last phorid newsletter), along with plans for the next few years.

First of all, our web site address has changed. Because of various problems associated with access to our site, we decided to use an outside service provider. Thus, our new address is at www.phorid.net, and we have posted further images and information about phorids (with much more to come). Of special interest are the color images of Melaloncha specimens that complement the descriptions and genitalia drawings in revisionary papers (see below). These can be found under "Revisions and other Research Products" at:

In the last Phorid Newsletter in 2001, I wrote an article entitled "Beginning to Study the Bee-Killing flies." Since then, our original grant period has almost expired. We have examined about 2,000 specimens of these flies, most of which were newly collected for the project, and have recognized so far 165 species. A number of papers describing these species are finished, in press, or nearly ready to submit, but it is likely that further work will reveal more species.

In terms of field work, the highlights of the project were collections made at the Tambopata Research Center in Peru (2001), Zona Protectora El Rodeo in Costa Rica (2001), Cumbre Alto Beni in Bolivia (2003), and Reserva Vida Silvestre Urugua-í in Argentina (2003). In each of these sites we collected well over 100 specimens of Melaloncha, including representatives of many species.

In particular, Cumbre Alto Beni (CAB) is an amazing, little-known site. It is a hilltop with a radio tower, situated about 40 km north of Caranavi, on the edge of a large expanse of montane forest. The fauna is the richest at a mid-elevation site that I have yet encountered in South America, on par with the extraordinary site Zurquí de Moravia in Costa Rica. Indeed, a number of species are shared by the two sites, while others have slightly different Bolivian counterparts that might or might not indicate separate species status. During our 8 days at CAB we collected 160 Melaloncha of 20 species, making it one of the richest sites we have yet sampled. Our collections were made at an aggregation of bees attracted to honey-sprayed undergrowth, as detailed in Brown (2001). Each day we collected, our catches grew larger, apparently as the flies became increasingly attracted to the bee aggregation (perhaps because of a buildup of bee resource-marking pheromone), from a catch of two specimens on day one to forty-one and fifty-six on our final days.

We also collected in the lowlands around Rurrenabaque during this Bolivia trip, but had horrendous collecting. Our trip was in April, at the beginning of the dry season, which is a great time to collect in the moist, often too-rainy middle elevations, but apparently lousy for the lower elevations. Also, the forest surrounding Rurrenabaque was almost exclusively young second-growth, which might have affected the phorids; however, a lepidopterist companion did quite well.

Our most recent collecting trip on this grant was in late November- early December 2003, when I traveled to northern Argentina. The intention was to try to collect new specimens of some of the species described by Borgmeier from Fritz Plaumann’s collections at Nova Teutônia, Brazil. Our collecting sites were Parque Nacional Iguazú and Reserva Vida Silvestre Urugua-í, both of which are fairly close to Santa Catarina, Brazil, where Plaumann collected. We had good collecting at Iguazu, but only on the flowers of Syagrus palms that were growing in the manicured grounds of the Sheraton Hotel! Otherwise, our Melaloncha collecting success was terrible, as we only collected a single female attracted to bees. Two hours drive south, however, at the much more remote Urugua-í site, we had overwhelming numbers of bees and tremendous numbers of flies. The bees were so common and aggressive in seeking moisture from our perspiration that we had to wear head nets to keep them off. Honey bees were a real hazard, as they were extremely common and aggressive, so we learned to put up with a couple of stings per day. Some of the larger Melaloncha were attracted to the honey bees, however, and we have some interesting new host records. The flies and bees were so numerous that at times I could conveniently watch oviposition attempts taking place on the bees swarming on my hands. Our goal to recollect the Borgmeier species was partly realized, but it was clear to me that the Nova Teutônia fauna was of a higher elevation than the 200-400 m sites where we worked. It should be noted, however, that "Nova Teutônia" is not a single spot, as Plaumann had to travel farther and farther as the years passed to find some forest in which to collect.

When I originally submitted the Melaloncha grant proposal for this project to the National Science Foundation (NSF), it included both morphological and molecular studies of the genus. Because of deficiencies in the molecular part of proposal, however, the grant was only partially funded (for the morphological part). I persisted in believing that the molecular part was critical to the success of a phylogenetic revision of Melaloncha, however, because only females are informative for morphology, and there were insufficient character states to reconstruct the entire genus. Therefore, I re-wrote the molecular part as a separate grant, adding a new collaborator, Dr. Paul Smith of California State University, Bakersfield. Together we gathered preliminary data from mitochondrial 12S rRNA, 16S rRNA, NADH 1 and nuclear 28S rRNA from several Melaloncha species (and outgroups), and wrote a new proposal. Happily, this second grant was successful, and we have a further three years to conduct field work and reconstruct the phylogeny of this interesting group.

There is a further project for which I am seeking NSF at this time. This project is a grant proposal I submitted in January, 2004, and if funded will result in new funds in September 2004.

The project is a higher-level phylogenetic reconstruction of the Phoridae. This is a highly contentious subject that has generated considerable published (and private) disagreement between Henry Disney and me. To try to resolve this problem, my collaborator Paul Smith and I submitted a proposal to revise the generic classification using molecular and morphological characters, similar in intent to our Melaloncha project. We already have sequences from four genes for a number of phorid genera, including Sciadocera rufomaculata, and several outgroups, including Ironomyia sp. (a new species being described by David McAlpine). This project will be conducted (and submitted for funding) in two parts, with the primitive phorids (traditional subfamilies Phorinae, Aenigmatiinae, Thaumatoxeninae and Termitoxeniinae) in the first proposal, and the Metopininae in the second. Obviously, the phylogenetic framework that these projects provide would be of great use to all phorid researchers, and we will keep you up to date on our progress.

Within the higher classification project, I am also proposing to revise the Neotropical species of the largest primitive phorid genus, Dohrniphora. This will be both a taxonomic revision, as well as a phylogenetic study, again using DNA sequences.

The phorid collection here in Los Angeles continues to grow, currently with about 140,000 databased specimens and about 50,000 more awaiting processing. In the summer of 2002, we were visited by Mike Mostovski who had obtained one of the LACM’s visiting scholar grants. Mike carted away a large package of Oriental Region specimens for further attention, so we look forward to many new species being described from our holdings.

One section of the collection that has grown markedly in the last few years is our holdings of fossil phorids, mostly from Eocene Baltic amber. We now have nearly 1,000 specimens, including a large number of rare, poorly known or undescribed species. Two particular gems are a male specimen of the European Archiphora robusta, and the holotype of Sciadophora bostoni (from Canadian Cretaceous amber); the latter was bought from a private collector who wanted to part with it (Note: in the original description, it was stated that the specimen of S. bostoni was deposited in the Canadian National Collection, but this was an error. I knew Mr. Boston when I was a graduate student in Alberta, and found out the complete story from him).

Phoridologists' Directory

The following is a list of the names, addresses and interests of phorid workers on my mailing list. Any additions, corrections or updates would be greatly appreciated. Those wanting to discuss their projects and interests at even greater length are welcome to do so.

James Bonet, Övre Bergsvägen 2, 126 34 Hägersten, Sweden. Telephone: 08-669 21 39. Email: james.bonet@nrm.se.

Hiroto Nakayama, Biosystematics Laboratory, Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University, 4-2-1 Ropponmatsu, Chuo-ku Fukuoka 810-8560, Japan. Telephone 092-726-4818. Fax 092-726-4644. Email youngrcb@mbox.nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp.