A group of entomologists in Los Angeles have found 12
newly-described fly species hidden in the urban wild. It's part of a
multi-year project called BioSCAN, which the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County launched in 2013.
The first round of analyzing more than 43,000 specimens collected
from backyards and gardens yielded 30 new species of the scuttle fly (so called because of its strange jerky movements).
And now, in a paper published in Biodiversity Data Journal,
the team of three entomologists describe an additional 12 species that
are so rare that some only appeared once out of the pool of more than
43,000 specimens, and none of them showed up more than 10 times. Because
of the rarity, the scientists had to really dig into their specimen
collections, some of which were poorly preserved. "[A] persistent thorn
in the side of the Megaselia taxonomist. Sorting out all of the errors and misidentifications is a slow, frustrating process," the authors write.read more
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