Save Cal Academy! Public Letter to the California Academy of Sciences Board of Trustees, May 2026

RIP Eric M. Fisher 🪰 #Diptera #Asilidae

New World screwworm reaches Northern Mexico Near Texas border, raising alarms over potential U.S. spread https://beaconbio.org/en/report/?reportid=8ba7ffcd-89a8-4aec-a4c2-9bc476d5361f&eventid=7a1ae0cb-6d86-4ea3-95cc-c1c141b3f696&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialpost

Screwworm is nearly at the US/MX border.

Scenario modelling of nickel supply to meet demand to 2050 identifies extensive overlap between land and coastal mines and high-priority areas for terrestrial and marine conservation, and shows how this tension would increase under a moratorium on deep-sea mining 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#WorldRobberFlyDay Oriental Leptogastrinae: male Ammophilomima sp. (Leptogastrinae, RMNH.INS.1675919) from Sumatra Island, Indonesia - from @naturalis.bsky.social collection #asiloidflies

🦇🪰Fascinating fly: #Diptera #Mystacinobiidae

Peter Raven, #botanist and advocate for #biodiversity, has died, aged 89

Manny’s dad visited us quite often when I was a kid— with memories of (breakfast) table talks, chickens, and community service.

🌿 Two of my favorite field botanists. #InMemoriam

🌱 Journal of Environmental Management: Restoring native prairie under solar panels can boost pollinator diversity up to sixfold, showing energy sites can support biodiversity with careful plant design.(Yudi Li,Rebecca R. Hernandez) ▶️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #PlantScience #Restoration

Some first-rate science writing: For this story, @jdrakephd.bsky.social carefully read our recent paper and then we spent a very fun 90 minutes or so talking on zoom. His article that gets right to the heart of our model, explains it clearly, and then explores why it will matter in the future.

𝘈𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘯 𝘦𝘶𝘳𝘺𝘢𝘭𝘦 is a newly discovered species of wingless #fly from China that lives in a very specific home: the base of a horseshoe bat's ear! 🦇 Access the full study here: doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1273.183551 @ucph.bsky.social #bat #parasite #endoparasite #morphology

Fantastic footage here of adults and larvae of the petroleum fly, one of the most extremophilic insects: youtu.be/V0CKcK5BqQU?...

Oukkal et al. find that, unlike endoparasitoid hymenopterans, endoparasitoidism in tachinid flies is not associated with viral domestication, possibly due to differences in venom use and host immune system avoidance. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evag022 #genome #evolution #diptera #virus

🌻💐🐝🪰🦋☀️🔋 Enhanced bloom and #pollinator #diversity from native #prairie restoration at a #photovoltaic #solar park:

Taxonomist Appreciation Day post I am in freakin' AWE of people doing primary taxonomic work. To do it well, you need deep scholarship to track past naming (and misnaming) efforts. You may need to hunt down specimens only to discover they are damaged, misindentified, or lost. 1/3

🪰 dipteran sign: @1st St., Davis, CA.

The official website for the 11th International Congress of Dipterology (ICDXI) has launched! icd11.biol.pmf.hr We'd love to see you in Croatia in 2027. 🇭🇷🪰🦟

Taxonomists: If you liked the old TAXACOM mailing list, we've restarted it. You can sign up, here: groups.google.com/g/taxacom Please share widely! We don't have access to the old lists. If you know any taxonomists, let them know, and pass it on. #science #academia #taxonomy

It's the funding of taxonomic research & training that's dying out. Without an ability to identify life forms, we can't recognize/quantify invasions & extinctions and their impacts on ecosystems. Imagine trying to repair a complex steel structure if you can't distinguish different types of bearings.

🎉 Huge news for BHL: The Field Museum is taking over the hosting of BHL’s website, servers & infrastructure, ensuring long-term stability and access for its 63+ million pages of open biodiversity literature. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2026/02/tran... #BHLTransition #ILoveBHL 🌍 📚 🧪

📢🪰 Don’t let the cut fly:

Ichneumonids of North America: #Hymenoptera 🐝

This is a devastating blow to Canadian dipterology, entomology, ecology, and beyond. Please share. #diptera @dipterists.bsky.social @teamdiptera.bsky.social @canentomologist.bsky.social @entsocamerica.bsky.social @entsocontario.bsky.social @entsocbc.bsky.social @royentsoc.bsky.social

The question of how to distinguish species boundaries from intraspecific geographic variation is now more of an issue than ever in the genomic age. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The infamous human bot fly (Dermatobia hominis). This specimen is from a rainforest in Honduras, deposited at the Biological Museum, Lund University. [MZLU 00131504] #Diptera #Oestridae 🪰

Many species not yet formally recognised may already be at risk of extinction. The findings underscore the urgent need for more fieldwork in understudied areas 📉 New paper out @consbiog.bsky.social by Farooq, Geldmann & Faurby👇 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #conservation #biodiversity

📢 A beetle outcompeting jaguars and vultures for carrion? In this #carrionecology study we recently published in Scientific Reports, we show that Coprphanaeus lancifer 🪲 buried >90% of the 🐹 carcasses deployed in terra firme Amazonian forests during the wet season! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

As the Arctic warms, mosquitoes—and the diseases they carry—float north. A recent study finds Jamestown Canyon virus and snowshoe hare virus present in mosquitoes in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of North America.

An integrative taxonomic treatment of the Mycetophilidae of Singapore, describing 98 new species of fungus gnat Now also with a brand new cover, featuring Integricypta fergusondavie gen. et sp. nov. Free download: doi.org/10.18476/202... @rudolf-meier.bsky.social @derschwingfliegen.bsky.social

Just out. Lots of muscid info packed into 1,341 pp. archive.org/details/be18...

Happy New Fungus Gnats! 🥂🦟🦟 Prof. Dalton Amorim and co-authors name 98 new species of Mycetophilidae from Singapore in a monograph just published in @integsyst.bsky.social The paper can be downloaded for free from the following link: tinyurl.com/342cs43t Enjoy! @rudolf-meier.bsky.social

Reflections on the evolving practice of systematic biology, a joy to write with Michael Donoghue for the upcoming 75th volume of Systematic Biology! academic.oup.com/sysbio/advan...

With the coming of the holiday season and the beginning of #InverteFest, we wanted to wish our followers Happy Holidays and highlight some reindeer parasites in the process!

There is also a museum record, back in 1941, on Gasterophilus larvae infestation in lion: #NaturalHistoryCollection #Diptera #Oestridae

🐝🌏 An illustrated type catalogue of bee species collected by Alfred Russel Wallace and described by Frederick Smith from Southeast Asia @ejtaxonomy.bsky.social:

It’s a good day to talk about women scientists. Let’s also remember Margaret W. Rossiter, who died in August of this year. She coined the “Matilda Effect” (named after suffragist Matilda Gage), which describes bias against acknowledging women’s achievements.

#FlyFriday new revision of assassin-fly genus Acronyches Williston, 1908 (Asilidae: Leptogastrinae) with @ento-allan.bsky.social out - 4 new species from Central + South America - flies catch spiders in their web (see www.inaturalist.org/observations... doi doi.org/10.4289/0013... #asiloidflies

An eel donated to a natural history museum in 1873 had two ticks embedded in its skin, making it the first known instance of ticks parasitizing a fish. But it was only first documented this year, when a tick specialist identified the ticks and reported the case in the Journal of Medical Entomology.

🪰🐞🐝 There are roughly 212 holotypes in 10 insect orders from the Torrevillas collection that were used to describe new species, helped improve Philippine biodiversity knowledge, and advanced careers of entomologists across the globe: 🇺🇸🇦🇺🇧🇪🇬🇧🇨🇿🇳🇱🇵🇭🇩🇪🇭🇺🇮🇳🇮🇹🇯🇵🇸🇮🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 hbs.bishopmuseum.org/pubs-online/...

Oxford’s Rafflesia Messaging Sparks Debate Over Representation, Scientific Credit, and Global South Visibility:

Poof! Not a magic trick:

🦟🐍

Leonard L. Co

#FlyFriday beautiful dark-colored assassin fly Diogmites nigripennis (Macquart, 1847) (Asilidae: Dasypogoninae) with wasp prey - collected at La Selva, Costa Rica in 2010 - 1 of 125 species of assassin flies known from this lowland rainforest habitat - n2t.net/ark:/65665/3... #asiloidflies

The end of an era: the Tree of Life Web Project is going dark after 3 decades. Anyone interested in communicating phylogeny online should read David's account of goals, history, and future. @bembidion.bsky.social subulatepalpomere.com/2025/11/02/t...

#DAMA framework since 2014: