Inside flies

I was delighted to see my work featured in Erica McAlister’s new book on diptera: ‘The Inside Out of Flies’, published by London’s Natural History Museum last month.

Cover of book on flies
The Inside Out of Flies by Erica McAlister

The photograph in question shows hundreds of eggs laid by a member of the horse fly family (Tabanidae).

Horse fly eggs featured in The Inside Out of Flies

Erica uses the reproductive strategy of horse flies to illustrate r/K selection theory:

r-selected species are seen as more opportunistic and are able to propogate more quickly if the environment is suitable, whereas K-strategists spend more time investing in a few offspring to give them whatever competitive advantages they can to prosper in what are often already crowded niches

The original image from my archive is shown below:

Horse fly eggs (Tabanus cordiger?) on salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor) stem. Surrey, UK

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