Researching 600-1000 species of economically important flies

Hello, my name is Arturo Santos and I am an entomologist, someone who studies insects. I have been interested in the natural world since I was a kid. I attended the University of South Florida in 2020 and graduated with a B.S in Environmental Biology magna cum laude. For many years I've seen that my passions and specialties, no less in the field of science, lack sources of funding and interest, especially with the cutting of the National Science Foundation and other grants.

Nonetheless, I specialize on the taxonomy or identification of a group of flies known as root-maggot flies that include many economically important species that cause extensive damage to agriculture. But unlike other groups of insects that are so economically important, these flies are extremely understudied and extremely difficult to identify. However, there are very few taxonomic specialists on this entire family of insects (Anthomyiidae) in the world. The status of this family in North America especially is in disarray, due to several reasons such as very poorly accessible research works on identifying these species and very outdated identification keys. Most entomologists can probably only identify them to family if they do not specialize on the group, which provides no to little information on the life history of the flies. In North America, the family consists of about a dozen or so genera and 600 species. Just one genus, the genus Delia, has had their economic impact estimated, with losses to cruciferous crops estimated at $100 million per year for both Western Europe and North America (Finch and Ackley, 1977, Shuhang et al., 2016).

My research plan is to make accessible the proper and accurate information related to the morphology and identification of Anthomyiidae, revise and create taxonomic identification keys for the genera in the Nearctic region, to travel and collect specimens of these flies to further update and progress our understanding of them, and to dramatically improve online global biodiversity data of these flies. This data can be found on websites such as iNaturalist, observation.org, BugGuide, faunaitalia.it, naturewatch.ca, Artfakta, NZBRN, Project Noah, BOLD Systems, and more.

I would also like to explore the possibility of creating a fund for projects relating to identification, curation, or academic work of other taxa by other citizen scientists.

Thank you very much for your support.

References

Finch, S., and Ackley, C. M. 1977. Cultivated and wild host plants supporting populations of the cabbage root fly. Annals of Applied Biology 85(1): 13-22.

Shuhang, W., Voorrips, R.E., Steenhuis-Broers, G., Vosman, B., & van Loon, J. J. A. 2016. Antibiosis resistance against larval cabbage root fly, Delia radicum, in wild Brassica-species. Euphytica 211: 139-155.