Stuck At Home, Scientists Discover 9 New Insect Species (wired.com) 35
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: When the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County shut down due to the pandemic in mid-March, Lisa Gonzalez headed home with the expectation that she would be back in a few weeks. But once it became clear that she wouldn't get back anytime soon, Gonzalez, the museum's assistant entomology collection manager, converted her home's craft room into a makeshift lab. Then she began sifting through thousands of insects the museum had previously collected via a citizen science project. [...] Using just her own microscope, Gonzalez identified dozens of insect species by looking at features like tiny hairs or the shape of a fly's wings. She also found some unusual insects that she turned over to her colleague, Brian Brown, the museum's curator of entomology. Using a larger Leica stereoscope that he hauled in from the office, as well as a smaller compound microscope he found on craigslist, Brown discovered nine species of small flies, all new to science. "It's always cool to find new things, and it is one of the great joys of this job," says Brown. "It's not just finding slightly different new things -- we find extravagantly different things all the time."
The insects, mostly small flies, wasps, and wasplike flies, had been collected through the BioSCAN project, which began in 2012 with insect traps set at 30 sites throughout Los Angeles, mostly in backyards or public spaces. The pair recruited volunteers who were then trained in how to use the "Malaise traps," which resemble two-person pup tents that force bugs to fly upward into collecting nets before the volunteers can put them into vials. The BioSCAN project started when Brown bet a museum trustee that he could find a new species of insect in her backyard in West LA. He did, and the project took off. In its first three years, Brown and the backyard collector discovered 30 new species of insects and published their results. The museum team found an additional 13 new species in the past two years, plus he and the staff have discovered nine more since the pandemic shutdown. "The nine new species include phorid flies, some of which are known for their ability to run across surfaces and or enter coffins to consume dead bodies," the report adds. "Brown and Gonzalez have also found botflies, parasites of rats and wasplike flies that have never been seen before in Southern California. They likely arrived from Central America, perhaps hitching a ride on a flowering plant or piece of food."
"With the help of tens of thousands of insects collected through the BioSCAN project, over the years Brown and Gonzalez have expanded the count of known insect species in the Los Angeles basin from 3,500 during the last census in 1993 to around 20,000 today."
The insects, mostly small flies, wasps, and wasplike flies, had been collected through the BioSCAN project, which began in 2012 with insect traps set at 30 sites throughout Los Angeles, mostly in backyards or public spaces. The pair recruited volunteers who were then trained in how to use the "Malaise traps," which resemble two-person pup tents that force bugs to fly upward into collecting nets before the volunteers can put them into vials. The BioSCAN project started when Brown bet a museum trustee that he could find a new species of insect in her backyard in West LA. He did, and the project took off. In its first three years, Brown and the backyard collector discovered 30 new species of insects and published their results. The museum team found an additional 13 new species in the past two years, plus he and the staff have discovered nine more since the pandemic shutdown. "The nine new species include phorid flies, some of which are known for their ability to run across surfaces and or enter coffins to consume dead bodies," the report adds. "Brown and Gonzalez have also found botflies, parasites of rats and wasplike flies that have never been seen before in Southern California. They likely arrived from Central America, perhaps hitching a ride on a flowering plant or piece of food."
"With the help of tens of thousands of insects collected through the BioSCAN project, over the years Brown and Gonzalez have expanded the count of known insect species in the Los Angeles basin from 3,500 during the last census in 1993 to around 20,000 today."
If you discover 5 new species stuck at home (Score:5, Funny)
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And 13 new species after that. Check for pentagrams while cleaning.
Bot Flies (Score:5, Interesting)
Bot flies are nasty. The females can't find a mammal on their own for some reason so they grab a female mosquito and lay their eggs on it. When the mosquito bites a mammal the warmth prompts the eggs to hatch. The larva burrow under the skin and live there until they mature, breathing through a tube in their abdomen that sticks above the surface. IIRC they secrete an anesthesia so that while uncomfortable it's not actually painful **UNTIL** the larva matures. They stop secreting while they pupate, and when they emerge from the pupal casing rip the hole larger to escape.
Re:Bot Flies (Score:4, Informative)
My friend was in the peace corps, and she got a botfly infestation in her neck after she hung her clothes out to dry...
Nobody told her not to do that!
She had to put specially folded duct tape on her neck to suffocate them, wait a day or so, then they try and back out of your neck... So you wait till when they've wiggled most of the way out of you, then you pinch the tape to try and grab them and pull them out without breaking of the head inside you!
did they use Apple? how does this relate to Apple? (Score:2, Funny)
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Seek, and you shall find.
Re:did they use Apple? how does this relate to App (Score:4, Funny)
how does this relate to Apple?
Maybe they discovered some new species of fruit flies?
Seems Appropriate (Score:4)
naturalist (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to make observations and Help scientists and resource managers understand when and where organisms occur.
Apple iOS : iPhone app in the Apple App Store [apple.com]
Android : Android app on Google Play [google.com]
this is rather than Los Angeles County a global project...
Quarantine Science Continued (Score:4, Funny)
I discovered 27.4% of the hairs around my belly button area are doubled up: two hairs per pore. 2.8% are triplets.
Stuck at home (Score:1)
Schroedinger Fly (Score:1)
"The nine new species include phorid flies, some of which are known for their ability to run across surfaces and or enter coffins to consume dead bodies,"
Can I name one "Schroedinger Fly"? (because "Schroedinger's Fly" would sound like a part of a garment)
Re: (Score:3)
Quantum Immortality may be applicable, in both senses.
Re: (Score:1)
I don't set them up, I just knock them down.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, yes, moderation.
So, do remember that the multiverse instance that one's consciousness "switches to" has to be compatible with that consciousness. So, should one's viewpoint be there is only physical outcomes, the likely outcome would, per this model, be "Quantum Torment", that is, a body that can be endlessly diseased but never enough to die.
Parallels with theism, I leave as exercise for the reader.
Re: (Score:2)
"Doctor, it hurts when I do this."
"So don't do that then."
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely nothing wrong with adding information, however desperate you are today.
But it hardly makes any difference, you add 0% of the value to any conversation you're in. You may as well not be there. I'm replying to myself even now.
But don't you have somewhere to not be?
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, you make the "Slashdot rules on posting". On the contrary, I have seen people think of something they wanted to add or correct and "reply to themselves" many times. There is nothing "wrong" about it, pathetic little Slashdot arbiter troll.
Of course, it would be trivially easy to "win" any argument with your "strategy' of "My opponent is wrong because he's X". That's why "psychologizing" is universally dishonest and fallacious, being both an Ad Hominem Fallacy and a Genetic Fallacy. But you have no p
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone who disagrees with you is subject to "death by evolution" or "everlasting torment".
Nothing to do with disagreeing with me. That's how reality -is-, per -your- decisions. You haven't made the slightest argument against the direct facts of science at hand. That's not me, that's you evading reality with nothing but personal insults and your bizarre issues with my posting style, like that changes the slightest thing about causality or the scientific facts.
Since you recalcitrantly and stupidly deny the direct facts of reality, while having no argument against it, it will have to simply play
Re: (Score:2)
Too many blatant transparent lies here to bother with.
Move on. Don't let the fact you ultimately have nowhere to go stop you.
Re: (Score:2)
Move on, and we'll see how much fun we have in the future. For now, you're not worth any of my time.
Even more new species found in Washington (Score:2)
I hear entomologists examining specimens collected around Congress, the Senate and the White House identified a large number of bloodsucking parasites.
Some new insect species also were discovered.
Re: (Score:2)
We know those since the ancient times.
They co-evolved with us like the dogs and cats, but they're not as nearly as useful.
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Your excellent observation provides ample reason for more research in this area.
I'm surprised it's not beetles (Score:2)
They're so diverse that if you drop some food and you don't take it from the floor in 5 seconds, a new beetle species will emerge to specialize on it.
Extinct (Score:1)
Were any live specimens found? These may be newly extinct species. The way I see it, is that they recruited people to kill rare insects and possibly extinct them.
Re: (Score:2)
There we go. You never let me down Slashdot. Just when you'd think the topic is as positive and uncontroversial as it gets, someone has to rain fear and doubt on the parade based on armchair speculation without a shred of evidence or that they have a clue what they're talking about. Congrats on being 'that' guy!