On catching 2 mm flies with a sweeping net
After about a year of intensive study of dipterans (i.e. flies, mosquitoes, midges and gnats), I've come to really appreciate collecting minute flies of 3 mm and smaller. After a careful observation using a dissecting microscope, I often end up looking at a fly rarely seen in France, each of them having less than twenty individual observations. These flies are not especially rare, most of them seem to be fairly common actually, but virtually nobody studies them. Citizen science platforms are great for larger or more colorful organisms, such as butterflies and beetles, but observing tiny dark flies is often a matter of specialists, which are usually really nice and helpful with my queries. I absolutely love spending a couple of hours on the tiniest black fly I found on dog feces outside, taking nice-enough macro-photographs and studying literature, just to feel buzzed and end up asking a 60-something years-old man I may find online who spent the last 40 years studying exactly this.
One of my favorite family of tiny flies is Ephydridae. These are brown, black or greyish, closely related to any body of water (think rivers, lakes, ponds...) and can easily skate on water. They sometimes are found in large numbers on mud and nearby vegetation. Even if members of this family can reach 11 mm, most of those I found are about 3 mm. Small, small. They can be caught with a sweeping net, but I like catching them directly into a small plastic tube. I'd love to give details about this family but I'm not a specialist. However, I can definitely say their face is really funny.
Hey. I love getting mail!