Tag: Diptera

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Squashed Fly Biscuits

Don’t worry dipterists, these delicious biscuits don’t actually have flies inside them! Also known as Garibaldi biscuits, the ‘flies’ are actually currants. Why not have a go at making them?

You will need:

  • Baking tray – lightly greased or with baking paper
  • Mixing bowl
  • Rolling pin
  • Wooden spoon
  • Teaspoon
  • Knife
  • Plate
  • A work surface sprinkled with flour
  • A wire rack to cool the biscuits
  • Oven pre-heated to 200oC (180oC if it’s a fan oven) / Gas mark 6
  • Oven gloves
  • A grown-up assistant

Ingredients:

  • 225g plain flour, plus a little extra for dusting
  • 100g currants
  • 75g lightly salted butter
  • 50g caster sugar
  • 5 tablespoons of milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, mixed with 3 tablespoons of sugar
  • 3 drops of vanilla extract
  • Beaten egg or milk to glaze

How to make the biscuits:

1 Wash your hands. Make sure your assistant washes theirs too.

2 In the mixing bowl, rub the butter into the flour using your fingertips. Keep going until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.

3 Add the sugar and milk.

4 Mix the ingredients together in a bowl until it forms a smooth dough.

4 Cover the bowl with a plate and put in the fridge for 30 minutes to cool.

5 While you are waiting, lightly grease the baking tray, or lay some baking paper on it, and lightly sprinkle flour on your work surface.

6 Pre-heat the oven to 200oC (180oC if it’s a fan oven) / Gas mark 6

7 Using the rolling pin, roll out the dough on the floured work surface until it is spread out into a 30cm square.

8 Cut the square of dough in half with a knife.

9 Scatter one half with the cinnamon & sugar mix and the currants. Save some of the cinnamon/sugar mix for the topping.

10 Put the other half on top, making a sandwich with the currants in the middle.

11 Roll the dough again until it’s about 5mm thick. You should see the currants showing through.

12 Carefully lift the dough onto the prepared baking tray. Ask your assistant to help you.

13 Trim the edges and use the knife to score the dough into 8cm x 4cm rectangles. Be careful not to cut right through.

14 Brush with egg or milk, then scatter the remaining cinnamon/sugar mix on top.

15 Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Ask your assistant to help, taking them out when they are golden.

16 Cool the biscuits on the wire rack and then break them into individual biscuits.

If you want to make the biscuits vegan, replace the butter with vegan block and the dairy milk with plant milk. Brush the biscuits with plant milk instead of egg wash.

We hope you enjoy eating and sharing your biscuits! If you liked this recipe, why not have a go at making our iced beetle biscuits?

This is the last post from Crunchy on the Outside because the HOPE for the future project has come to an end. We have really enjoyed sharing the amazing world of insects with you. The blog will stay online for the time being and you can check out all that’s happening at the Museum on our Main Website.

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Are You a Fantastic Fly Finder?

Take part in this exciting ecology project and become a fabulous Fly Finder! Scientists are trying to understand how humans are changing mountain lakes. Insects that live near water are a crucial food source for birds, frogs, and bats. Climate change and predators introduced by humans may be affecting these important species. 

Scientists have caught insects in traps and need your help to count the different types. In this citizen-science project from Zooniverse, you will be shown a picture of some flies. The insects you’ll see were hatched in lakes high above sea level in California, where they feed and grow until they’re ready to emerge as flying adults. These adults are often eaten by animals like birds. This makes them a perfect ‘pipeline’, delivering nutrients and energy from the aquatic environment of the lake to the terrestrial environment surrounding it! Your effort on this project will help scientists understand what changes threaten this connection, and what we can expect in years to come.

Start by following this link to Fly Finder. Click on ‘Identify insects’ to start. You can click on ‘Learn more’ first if you want to find out more about the project.

Sample of flies from Fly Finder

You will see an image of a sticky white card that has been used to catch flies. Looking at the image, you first have to decide what types of fly you can see. That might sound tricky, but there is an on-screen field guide to help you and most of the time you just need to decide whether it’s a ‘small fly’ or a ‘medium fly’. One you have decided, you just select the correct category from the list by clicking on it, then move your mouse (or your finger on a tablet) and click (or tap) on the fly. This will mark it for the researchers.

Screenshot from Fly Finder. This sample has a lot of flies!

Some of the images show several flies, others show quite a lot and a few will have none at all. You can do as few or as many pictures as you like. Lots of people doing a little each soon creates a lot of results for the scientists. This shows them which types of insect, and how many, are found in the different places where the traps were set.

If you enjoyed Fly finder, or your like the idea of taking part in other projects, why not have a look at our Make and Do page?

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CSI: Crime Scene Insects

How can insects help solve crimes? In this video, forensic entomologist Dr Amoret Whitaker discusses her work and how she came to work with some common flies that can provide important clues.

The blow flies that Dr Whitaker talks about are a family of flies (Diptera) called the Calliphoridae. They often have bodies with a metallic sheen and are also known as carrion flies, bluebottles and greenbottles. The fly pictured in the video is Cynomya mortuorum, known as the yellow-faced fly or sometimes, more gruesomely, as ‘the fly of the dead’.

Forensic entomology is just one way in which scientists work with insects. If you would like to know more about different entomologists and what they do, visit the People section of the blog.

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The Natty Winter Gnat

There aren’t many insects out and about at this time of year but on a warmer day you may see clouds of winter gnats (Trichocera annulata and related species) ‘dancing’ in the sunlight.  

Trichocera sp. swarming © Tuomo Tuomikoski, CC BY-SA 4.0

What persuades these small flies to come out in the depths of winter? Well, the dancers are males hoping to attract females. It’s thought that gathering together in a group like this makes it easier for the females to spot them. The trouble is, each individual male then has to compete for her attention!

If you are out for a walk, it may seem that a group of gnats is following you around; that’s because they are! If you are the warmest thing around, they will stay near you and make the most of your body heat.

Winter gnat (Trichocera annulata) © Steve Kerr CC BY 4.0
Trichocera_annulata © James K Lindsey

You don’t need to worry about being bitten: although these gnats look a bit like mosquitos, they are completely harmless. The adults aren’t interested in drinking your blood, they feed on nectar. The larvae can be found in leaf litter, feeding on fungi, leaf mould and other decaying matter.

You can find out more about Trichocera on the Bug Life website: https://www.buglife.org.uk/bugs/bug-directory/winter-gnat/

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Trapping the Spotted Fruit Fly

The Spotted Wing Fruit Fly, Drosphila suzukii, (known as ‘SWD’ for short) is a small but potentially devastating pest that attacks soft fruits. Here’s how to make a simple trap from a plastic bottle. You can then see if you have caught any fruit flies and send your results to an exciting citizen science project.

Making your Fly Trap

You will need:

  • A large empty clear plastic bottle (perhaps a fizzy drink bottle or squash bottle)
  • Apple cider vinegar (cheapest from a supermarket)
  • Washing-up liquid
  • String
  • Ruler
  • An auger, awl or large nail (2 mm to 3 mm diameter)
  • A magnifying glass OR a low power stereo microscope (OR a camera phone and some honey!)

What to do:

Start by watching this video by Chris Thomas of the Queckett Microscopical Club. It shows each step of making the fruit fly trap.

Step by step Instructions:

  1. This bit needs an adult to help. Carefully pierce 8 holes in the bottle more than half way up, using the augur or nail. Lie the bottle on a table or board. Hold it firmly at the bottom half and gently pierce with a sharp metal point or augur, through the upper side of the bottle towards the board. If the point slips, it should then go safely into the table or board and NOT into your hand. Make the holes 2-3 mm in diameter, to let in small flies. I used a sharp augur to pierce the plastic and then a wider diameter nail to enlarge the hole.
  2. Fill the upright bottle to ¼ to ⅓ with apple cider vinegar. The level must be below the holes!
  3. Add one or two drops of washing-up liquid.
  4. Screw lid back onto plastic bottle.
  5. Use the string to hang your baited trap from a tree/bush/holder at a suitable place.
  6. Leave the trap for one week.
  7. At the end of the week, seal up holes with sellotape.
  8. Swirl bottle gently and carefully pour the fly catch into a white / light coloured plastic dish. (OPTIONAL: strain the fly catch through an old metal tea sieve and then transfer the flies to clean water with a bit of vinegar in it to preserve them.)
  9. Record your results (see below).
  10. At the end of the experiment, wash and flush away the flies and liquid. Wash the plastic bottle thoroughly and recycle it. Don’t forget to wash your hands.

2021 Spotted Fruit Fly Survey

If you have caught some fruit flies, you could send your results to the 2021 Spotted Wing Fruit Fly Survey and help track the spread of this pest across the UK.

Drosophila suzukii on a ripe banana. Image credit: Flickr / Martin Cooper CC BY 2.0

The Spotted Wing Fruit Drosophila (SWD) is a pest in many parts of the world because it causes damage to soft fruits. It was first spotted in the UK in 2012 and this survey aims to find out how far it has spread. Counting and scoring the results from your trap will be really helpful and we will link your results with those from many other people. The more people who contribute, the more we can learn about the biology of this pest.

Fruit flies are small – only a few millimetres long – but can be identified by a couple of key features with a hand lens, low power microscope, or by using a mobile phone camera (see below). The male flies are easily identified by their characteristic wing spot. The females don’t have the wing spot but do have a vicious-looking saw-like egg laying organ (called an ovipositor) at their rear end.

You might like to use your fruit fly trap to catch Spotted Wing Drosophila over a week, count what you have caught and send the results to Chris Thomas of the Quekett Club at bulletin@quekett.org by the end of November.

The Club aims to collate all the results and publish them in the Quekett Journal, mentioning all participants who submit results.

Identification help

How to identify male and female Spotted Fruit Flies. Image credit: © Queckett Microscopical Club
  • Either use a magnifying glass or a low power microscope to magnify the catch. Don’t worry if you don’t have one – watch our video Turn Your Phone into a Microsope.
  • Fruit flies are very small, between 2 mm and 5 mm long. They are quite distinctive.
  • Use the pictures to help you identify the Spotted Winged Drosophila.
  • The male flies are obvious even to the naked eye – they are red-eyed fruit flies with a black spot at the end of the wing. Under magnification, they also have 2 spurs on their forelegs.
  • The female flies are best viewed under 10× to 30× magnification: they have no spots but their saw-like ovipositor (egg-laying organ) can be seen clearly. Once you have seen one, you will never be confused. They also have clear black and yellow bands on their abdomen.

Record your results and send them to the Quekett Club

You should include:

  • Name and address (or just your post code, if you don’t wish to be named as a participant)
  • Date when you emptied the fly trap
  • Total number of ALL insects/creatures in trap
  • Total number of ALL fruit flies
  • Number of male Spotted Wing Drosophila
  • Number of female Spotted Wing Drosophila
  • The Queckett club would love to see pictures of your catch, so please add them too
  • SEND YOUR RESULTS TO  Chris Thomas at bulletin@quekett.org by the end of November.

It’s really important to record and send in ALL results – even if you did not catch anything!

  • If you don’t catch anything, enter ‘Nothing’
  • If there are no Spotted Wing Drosophila, but you see other fruit flies, enter ‘Common Fruit Fly’
  • If you can’t decide if they are males or females, just tell us the total number of SWD

Make sure you send your survey results to Chris Thomas at the Quekett Club, but the team at Crunchy on the Outside would also like to see your fly traps and catches! Let us know how you got on by emailing us at hopelearning@oum.ox.ac.uk or using the Contact Us form.