The Smaller Majority

Mozambique Diary: Red-headed flies

Two months, that’s how long I have been neglecting this blog. Some people had even sent me messages to check if I were still alive. But I am alive and the reasons for my silence were good – until last week I was in Mozambique, working at the Wilson Lab and busily preparing for the next biodiversity survey…

Dermatobia Redux

Raising two dipteran children was an interesting experience. It was embarrassing on a few occasions, when both of my arms started bleeding profusely in public; painful at times, to the point of waking me up in the middle of the night; and inconvenient during the last stages of the flies’ development, when I had to…

Puppy-killing scientist smuggles rainforest babies in body cavity

I almost got away with it – for five days I had covered my body and slathered insect repellant onto my skin with an almost religious zeal, but on the last day I faltered. I was in Belize, teaching macrophotography at the Bugshot workshop. The course was almost over, and so I relaxed and decided to…

So long, 2014

It was an interesting, busy year, which explains in part why I have been neglecting this blog recently. I am not going to give a month-by-month account of 2014 but thought that a few highlights might be in order. That’s about it – I am looking forward to 2015, which promises to be even more…

Mozambique Diary: Not all flies fly

After a long hike in the scorching heat of the African savanna the cool, shady patch of tall miombo forest looked like heaven to us. I was in the southern part of Gorongosa, looking with a few friends for some elusive species of arthropods. But we were having little luck finding any and after several…

African Bats: Conservation in the Time of Ebola

A guest post by Jen Guyton The last fragile wing finally came free from the threads of my mist net. I sank into the sand on the riverbank, took a deep breath, and tugged off my yellow deerskin gloves. Eight cotton bags wiggled as they hung from the line that tethered my mist net to…