The world’s smallest fly (0.40 mm long) was collected at Kaeng Krachan National Park in Thailand, the country’s largest.
It is a beautiful place with hot lowlands and misty highlands where the forests are crawling with land leeches.
There are many large mammals in this park, including leopards.
We conducted a training course for the Thai parks staff who would be helping us; here is Mike Sharkey leading the group on how to properly use a Malaise trap. The fly, Euryplatea nanaknihali, was collected by one of the many traps placed in this field.
Wow, gorgeous topography.
It is a gorgeous place, for sure.
Are your Malaise traps disturbed by any of the large mammals? When I did fieldwork in Uganda I was always cautious to place the traps far away from any fruiting tree, to avoid them to be destroyed by curious primates.
we did have one stomped by an elephant,but otherwise we were fairly lucky