Fly Times Issue 48, April 2012 - North American Dipterists Society

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Now is the time … to publish in CJAI.
We need your keys!
Steve Marshall
University of Guelph Insect Collection and Insect Systematics Laboratory,
School of Environmental Sciences, 1216 Edmund C. Bovey Building, University of Guelph,
Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1, Canada; samarsha@uoguelph.ca
I suspect that almost everyone reading Fly Times is sitting on enough specialized knowledge about their
favorite taxa to spin off a useful key on the back of a napkin in the time it takes to consume a leisurely
beverage. How about saving that napkin for wiping your chin, and instead laying out your key in
PowerPoint for publication in CJAI Dropping couplets into PowerPoint using the template provided
on the CJAI instructions to authors at (http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/bsc/ejournal/authors.html) is
easier than scribbling on a napkin, and it is not much harder to drag and drop images right into the
template. And taking character images is getting easier and easier, so that is no barrier either. CJAI is
produced on behalf of the Biological Survey of Canada and the Entomological Society of Canada (it is
now a core publication of the Society) fully refereed and open access. Just Google CJAI or The
Canadian Journal of Arthropod Identification to see some of the fly keys already published. Once
reviewed, your key will be converted to html and pdf versions for publication on our web site.
Keys covering broad areas are encouraged, the only restriction being that they have some relevance to
the Canadian fauna. Published keys range in scope from provincial to global, but most cover a big piece
of the continent, such as northeastern North America.
With your support we could turn CJAI into a one-stop shop for user-friendly fly keys … a
tremendously useful resource for all of us.
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In the shadows of giants: why would sciomyzids lurk on and around tarantulas
Steve Marshall
University of Guelph Insect Collection and Insect Systematics Laboratory,
School of Environmental Sciences, 1216 Edmund C. Bovey Building, University of Guelph,
Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1, Canada; samarsha@uoguelph.ca
During a visit to Chile (in December 2008) I spotted a wandering male tarantula near Olmue, just north
of Santiago. On close examination, the spider turned out to have several unusual associates and
hitchhikers – small sciomyzid flies later identified by Lloyd Knutson as Parectinocera inaequalis.
Parectinocera are unknown as larvae, but it is extremely unlikely that they have any real association
with spiders. So why were several flies riding on the legs and body of the spider Perhaps the spider
was serving as an opportunistic lek site. Mating pairs were seen nearby, even under the spider’s legs, as
you can see in the photos. Does anyone have a better explanation