This summer, I will conduct an experiment where I am using different baits (mushrooms, snails, arthropods, fish, liver and yeast) to attract phorid flies. It will be interesting to find out if different species of phorid flies are attracted by different kinds of bait. The experiment is conducted in a forested area in the South of Stockholm where we are looking at three different habitats (coniferous forest, mixed forest and deciduous forest). With 5 replicates of each bait in the respective habitats, we will be running 90 traps in total. I will also run Malaise traps in the different habitats in order to see if the same species are caught with different types of traps.
The traps are emptied frequently (every four days) so chances are good that you will see me or one of my colleagues around if you are in the area. The plan is to run the experiment from the end of June until the end of September, if the weather is good, possibly even longer. This will result in over 2200 samples. A new freezer is ordered and the samples will be stored at the Swedish Museum of Natural History where I will sort and continue working with them.
My plan is to extract DNA from as many specimens as possible in order to get an overview over which species are found in the area and if there are differences in bait and/or habitat preference. The molecular studies will be complemented by morphological studies. I expect to catch more females than males in the baited traps. At the moment it is often difficult or impossible to identify females to species because of the lack of good morphological characters. My hope is that I will catch males of the same species in the Malaise traps (or that I can find them in other earlier collected material) so that I can get DNA sequences from them. These sequences can then be compared to the sequences of unidentified females and thus paired together.
I am looking forward to a work intensive summer and fall and hope for many phorids to find my traps. (I also hope that not too many bigger animals like dogs, badgers or humans will find and dig up my traps...)
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