A Phorid Fly (Not for the squeamish)

[NikonUser]

Super cold here lately so nothing moving outside. I did find this tiny black fly on an inside window, almost certainly emerged from the soil in one of our potted plants.
Dipterists recognize this fly, at the family level, by the distinctive veins: almost all the heavy veins are squeezed into the basal front half of the wing.
I recognize them by their punk hair-do.
This fly belongs to the Family: Phoridae, known as "scuttle flies" and "coffin flies".

As Marshall comments in his excellent books:

http://www.amazon.ca/Flies-Natural-Hist ... ords=flies

http://www.amazon.ca/Insects-Natural-Hi ... ll+insects

Flies in this family "found almost everywhere and do almost everything possible for an insect to do". Perhaps the most interesting life histories are found in the ant-decapitating species and in the species that lives on human corpses.

Quoting Marshall: "females are able to track you down when you are "six-feet under", and lay eggs to start a subterranean population on your nutritious cadaver."

Fly in glycerine, Nikon CFN Plan 10x, Nikon D610; ZS PMax

[Peter M. Macdonald]

Nice capture. Phorids are always attractive creatures.

I am intrigued by your comment "Fly in glycerine". Not sure that we have had this technique before. I would be interested to know both the why and the how.

How do you arrange the fly in the glycerine? How do you avoid air bubbles? What is the advantage of using glycerine rather than imaging a dry fly? What sort of container are you imaging in? Do you have to image through the container, or are you just looking through the glycerine? What is the lighting setup?

With apologies for so many questions, but this looks to be a rather interesting technique.

Peter

[abpho]

Impressive work NU.

[NikonUser]

thanks abpho; nice to find a live insect in early December.

Peter: mounting insects in glycerine is an old established technique:
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/ind ... ount2.html

I caught the fly alive and was intending to photograph it. Unfortunately it died, dehydrated and shriveled. I soaked in in water (with a drop of vinegar) and it swelled back up. Rather than dry it out I replaced the water with glycerine and mounted it on a slide with a cover slip. Lighting was a single flash.
Air bubbles are always a problem, just have to be careful not to introduce any; always useful to wet the underneath of the cover slip before placing it onto the glycerine drop (containing the bug!)

[Peter M. Macdonald]

Many thanks for the reply and the link. I had not realised that this was a glycerine microscope mount. I had assumed that this was a picture of a specimen in a container of glycerine - which, I suppose, is was a microscope slide with glycerine is!

Peter