With a recent spike of interest I’ve seen from people wanting to start IDing flies, I’d like to start a discussion about which flies especially need help. I specialize within the Brachyceran suborder, so I cannot speak for everyone. The Lucilia genus identification correction campaign that started years ago is going well (at least everywhere that isn’t South America), but the state of blow flies in general is questionable since they frequently look identical to most people.
What other fly families or genera or whatever could use some help?
This is something I’ve been putting a lot of time into over the last year or two. I think generally I don’t see much follow-up on anything that gets placed into Calyptrates or Sciaroidea, so they could use more love. Annotating more things in Cecidomyiidae so that they are searchable based on whether the observation is a gall or the organism would probably be helpful, even if you can’t push the ID further.
Some things I’m tackling: Just about every day several Geron (or other bee flies, Mythicomyiidae, etc.) observations come in that the CV places into Apolysis and so I check Apolysis daily for new incorrect IDs. Many nematocerans are not well represented yet and lots of different flies get identified as mosquitos or chironomids initially as well that need correcting. Hemerodromiinae gets suggested for Platypalpus photos very often and needs correction often. I’m slowly adding life stage annotations to as much as I can so its easier to search for examples of larval and pupal forms of different flies. These are just some examples of common types of workflows. Its also quite helpful to sort things stuck at Diptera or the suborders to the correct family, this is basically the only way an actual expert will see that observation, most do not attempt to ID outside or above their family of expertise.
Also check out https://dipterists.org/resources.html which has many useful links. Often BugGuide also has good resources listed at the bottom of the Info tab for whatever family or genus you happen to be looking at on their site (for Nearctic flies).
The number of ‘needs ID’ Lucilia in North America seems to still be growing… I have made this resource to help with them, and think they might be a good place to start if the community is interested in a project: https://edankow.github.io/identify/
For some reason I’ve found CV wants to identify many bugs (not just flies) as gallinippers specifically. Not sure why. Some of them don’t look like a mosquito at all to me XD
I think the easier question is what fly families don’t need help?!
We have different people tuning in at suborder level to refine to family level etc
( I’m not currently active atm but this has been my main area in the past )
But of the 150(?) or so families, we only have folks more dedicated at a family level in what… 20? families? In European obs at least I see we have some support for the ones below, but even then its often just 1 person which is insufficient for taking to RG without the user blind agreeing…
Very very quickly off the top of my head ( forgive me dipterists I forget / am unaware of ) …
Chironomidae
Culicidae
Tipulidae ( some genera / geographies… )
Plus people like @chrisangell who fill the gaps across the Acalyptrates
So there are plenty of families to choose from!
Of course not all families have equal number of obs or resources / possibility to ID from photos…
I feel like Sciomyzidae could definitely have more support given how identifiable many are…also Tephritoidea …in UK the specialist for Agromyzidae sadly quit and deleted all his IDs, so there are a whole bunch of those that need fixing now…(not sure there is much support for dipteran leaf mines in general (?)…)
But yes, even the above families only have a single identifier giving support for the most part. And even in Syrphidae, where there are many identifiers, there is always work to do! So, the list is endless…
Interesting! I live in Florida. How would you recommend attempting to observe them? I know the state has many cool fly species (especially beetles/fire “flies”, but also a few true flies) and endemics such as Asaphomyia floridensis.
I’ll look into more resources eventually, but I was wondering if you come to pick up tips over time. I’m fairly familiar with wildlife photography (semi-professional bird and mammal photographer) as well as some macro, but obviously many flies are much smaller and more difficult than the butterflies, likely even hairstreaks sps.?, and tiger beetles I’m used to.
Taking photos of the anterior, posterior and dorsal sides would be useful. Basicosta (scale at base of wing), upper and lower calypter and thorax, and abdomen hairs are needed to differentiate between blow fly species. The Fly Guide goes over body parts useful for identification
Honestly, the amount of near-identical species that can only be differentiated by minor morphological differences (and especially not in in situ shots) across the families is such a hassle. As well as this, the sheer number of undescribed Dipterans
When I began dabbling in Syrphid ID-ing, I found it really helpful in the comments of more experienced ID-ers in certain families (shoutout to Matthew Vosper and his journals!) - now that the ID tips feature exists, I think this potentially could make the jump up to identifying to species/genus much less daunting and easier to step into ID-ing.
Most of my fly observations go unidentified, except for Hoverflies (Family Syrphidae) and that’s hit-or-miss.
What I would most like to see get more identifications are Tachinid flies (Family Tachinidae) simply because they are the most interesting looking (to me) such as this strikingly colored one: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/384312544
Also Crane flies (Superfamily Tipuloidea) because they are large enough to get okay photos of (unlike gnats and midges and other tiny things.)
Bristles. A lot of blowflies are all about which bristles are present where, how many, how long or strong are they. Think of the head, top of thorax and abdomen, side of thorax, and especially the legs! Now the legs can be a pain because the bristles are all around, and there’s always some pointing straight towards, or away from, the camera so you can’t see them - so several angles on the legs is often invaluable.
