There are plenty of taxonomists who use museum collections as a resource, but not everyone makes collections the basis of their work. Rodrigo Dios studies Tachinid flies, a group that displays some of the most diverse parasitism behavior of all animals. By reorganizing and rediscribing museum specimens, he finds that we have a lot to learn from both flies and museum collections. “It's crazy,” says Rodrigo, about working in collections. “You can actually assess all this knowledge, all this variation between time and between space as well. It's like infinite knowledge.”

Rodrigo Dios’ paper “Taxonomic update on Cordyligasterini, new generic synonyms and new species of Neosophia Guimarães” is in volume 29 of Entomological Science.

It can be found here: www.doi.org/10.1111/ens.70003

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Rodrigo Dios - English Transcript

This transcript translated into portuguese: Rodrigo Dios - Portuguese Transcript

New Species: Neosophia argentifasciata, Neosophia pakitza

Episode image credit: Rodrigo Dios

Follow Rodrigo on Instagram: @rodrigodios

Rodrigo’s paper about the fly that lays eggs on plants: www.doi.org/10.6620/ZS.2024.63-54Connect with Rodrigo on iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/rodrigodios

Don’t be shy! Contact Rodrigo about flies: rodrigodios@gmail.com

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“The queen especially was not like, like totally not like mad mad, but like mad at him…”

That analysis is from Charleigh (age 8), who I talked to along with her dad Jesse (older than 8) about the 1998 classic A Bug’s Life! We discussed serious matters such as the number of legs ants have, if insects have blood, and if the movie missed an opportunity by not including a dung beetle (I think they did).

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Hi everyone, incredibly it's time for the third biennial New Species Census! Every two years I ask listeners to answer a few questions about who they are, how they listen, and what they would like from the podcast in the future.

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