The Society for the study of flies (Diptera)

Hello Georgina,

I found this book in French, perhaps that might help you ?

http://www.eyrolles.com/Sciences/Livre/ … 2880746971

Best wishes

falky wrote:

Large cadavers (pig etc.) left in a variety of locations in different parts of Britain and monitored over several months would provide you with a good dataset of flies, but I'd be surprised if such as experiment has not been done. I was always on the look-out for dead horses when I did a big New Forest study, because the extra fly species it attracted (often including rarities) was amazing, and loads of things bred in the organically rich water surrounding the carcass, esp Eristalis/Eristalinus hoverflies and Themira sepsids. Needed a peg for my nose mind.

Good luck, Falky

A fair few of those type of experiments with pigs have been done, we did a few runs at Nottingham Trent Uni which we interviewed by Reuters and New Scientist about. I would agree bigger is better in terms of amount of specimens, however pigs generally are considered the best substitute for humans.

Have you thought of asking about volunteering at the Natural History museum? while it might not give you much field experience, familiarity with the types of specimens you might encounter would always be useful

Last edited by Andy chick (2012-02-10 13:00:40)