My old friend and colleague Kevin Barber is visiting us in Los Angeles to help out with our Diptera collection and to do a little collecting. Kevin works on a family called Anthomyzidae, which are slim, long-winged flies usually associated with plants upon which they innocuously feed. Two species that he is looking for are known from Morro Bay (California), so we took him up to the Central Coast to find them.

I am happy to report that he found them both!

One is a species called Stiphrosoma vittatum with prominent stripes on its body, whereas the other is an undescribed Anthomyza species. Both were found together in a streamside forest near Cambria, CA, where the indicator plant that Kevin was seeking, Equisetum telmateia, grows abundantly (thanks to local bird expert Jim Royer who suggested the site). One more day of collecting remains, and Kevin’s goal is to collect many more specimens, especially of the Anthomyza, of which so far he found only two specimens.

Finding such otherwise unknown or poorly known species of tiny (up to 3 mm long) flies is tougher than finding a needle in a haystack: at least you know where the haystack is! I am constantly amazed at the skill and knowledge of taxonomic experts like Kevin Barber.