ChrisR

Many years ago Professor Donald Quicke gave me some malaise trap samples from a project he was running in the Cameron Highlands of West Malaysia. The specimens have languished in boxes for ages but just recently I have started to work on them using Crosskey (1976). The key works fairly well but there are quite a few that fall through it for one reason of another so more work will have to be done.

Here are some photos of some of the specimens:

* Crosskey, R. W. (1976) “A Taxonomic Conspectus of the Tachinidae (Diptera) of the Oriental Region”

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Just received an update from Dr Owen Lewis, the manager of the Sturmia bella project, a project set up to investigate the role of Sturmia bella in the decline of the Small Tortoishell (Aglais urticae) butterfly.

I have attached his first-year report below (in PDF format) and it makes interesting reading. While Sturmia is undoubtably a very common parasitoid of Small Tortoishell it is by no means certain that it is responsible in any significant way for the decline in the UK population. However, the project is still ongoing and more data is necessary before any real conclusions can be made.

sturmia_bella_report_may09

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This article just provides my take on the controversy raging amongst British lepidopterists over the significance of the appearance of the parasitoid Sturmia bella in the decline of the Small Tortoishell (Aglais urticae, Nymphalidae) in England.
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