There's a new fly in town.
While out for a run yesterday, in Ōtautahi-Christchurch, NZ, I noticed this unusual orange-headed black fly. I uploaded my photos to #iNaturalist when I got home and learned that it's the Australian Soldier Fly, *Inopus rubriceps*. This looks to be the first record of it anywhere in the South Island south of Nelson.
The species is a minor pasture pest and is well-established in NZ's North Island, where it was first seen in 1944.
As the world warms, NZ continues to fill with Australian insects. They first establish in the North Island then spread southwards. The pattern is repeating over and over. In this case, the two Australian parasitoid wasps (Neurogalesus spp.) that feed on *Inopus rubriceps* have also already established in the North Island.
*Inopus rubriceps* is a distinctive fly, especially the female which has the orange head (the male is all black). Keep an eye out and you might find some more of them.
https://www.inaturalist.nz/observations/347771177
#Diptera #entomology #iNaturalistNZ #invasionBiology #insects #nz #Christchurch #fly
89 new PhDs from the University of Iceland in 2025
December 1st is a ceremony for the new PhDs
5 of those were from Biology programme, spanning #Arcticcharr #genomics, #whale #bioacoustics, #speciesInteractions, #invasionbiology and #transgenerational #plasticity , all with #AquaticAnimals
Picture #UIceland
https://english.hi.is/news/almost-90-candidates-completed-phd-university
OnlineFirst - "Strange birds of a feather: Israeli common myna, between invasiveness and belonging" by Eran Nisan Schwarzfuchs:
#Invasionbiology #multispecies #environment #alienspecies #Israel
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486251395505
European fire ants found in Iceland.
One colony
Garden in Reykjavík
2 Queen
4000 ants
#myrmicarubra
#redants
#ants
#iceland
#invasionBiology
/ Evrópskir eldmaurar (Myrmica rubra) á Íslandi. 2022. Mancini M, Guðmundsson A, Pálsson A. Náttúrufræðingurinn.[Icelandic naturalist]. 92 (1-2), 32-39. https://natturufraedingurinn.is/evropskir-eldmaurar-myrmica-rubra-a-islandi/
I was identifying observations on #iNaturalistNZ over lunch and found this.
It's the lacewing, Mallada basalis, and it's just arrived in the South Island.
There are now three observations from Nelson, the earliest on 21 April.
It's native to Australia and warmer islands like New Caledonia, Norfolk Island, and Kermadec Islands. It got to the North Island by 2010.
Australian insects keep spreading southwards as NZ warms.
How can #eDNA methods be applied to problems of terrestrial #biosecurity & #InvasionBiology? Our new review in #SciTotEnv looks into how this promising tool is being applied, its future potential & what needs to be done to close priority #KnowledgeGaps.
#OpenAccess: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.171810
Keeping up with the literature in #invasionbiology is a daunting task! 🌊
🗺 We are building an interactive and open atlas of knowledge for invasion biology... and beyond!
📖 Read about our progress in the latest #workshop report just published today: https://riojournal.com/article/115395/
This collaborative and community-curated project is part of a long term vision called the hi knowledge initiative https://hi-knowledge.org
#IAS #KnowledgeGraphs #OpenScience #wikidata #IUCN #ecology #urbanEcology
With the exponential increase in scientific publications, new conceptual and technological tools are needed to help scientists, students, managers and policy-makers to navigate and digest current scientific knowledge. Hi Knowledge is an initiative to synthesise and visualise scientific knowledge, with an initial focus on invasion biology that is currently expanding to include urban ecology, restoration ecology and freshwater ecology. In a workshop on 5-6 June 2023 in Berlin, Germany, we discussed and tested a collection of new open tools related to this initiative in order to publish, curate, explore and synthesise concepts and results in ecology. Three main themes were discussed during in-person breakout group sessions: (1) building and using open tools for knowledge curation, exploration and synthesis; (2) making open knowledge searchable and machine friendly by improving modelling and annotation of scientific knowledge; and (3) extending beyond the field of invasion biology. We report on the discussions of all twelve sessions pertaining to these themes. A main underlying goal of our workshop was to build a community of scientists involved in openly co-designing and using these tools. Overall, the participants were enthusiastic about the usefulness of these tools and discussions gravitated around improving them and finding strategies to scale-up participation by the community. Follow-up user tests and publications are planned for individual tools and topics.
Scientific Frontline
Jon Sullivan
charrvein
@envplane
Journal of Plant Ecology
Charrvein
Bruce Webber
Maud Bernard-Verdier