On the limits of professional entomologist's competence

0_o well, he doesn't know - apparently he hasn't been tormented by a fly question for a long time... What's the big deal? Or he didn't have time or didn't want to....

About no time - it's strange. For the most part, families are easily defined habitually, so take a look and you're done.

It is ok. It's better to say that you don't know than to give an incorrect answer.

You can't know everything! A specialist is like a flux, as Kozma Prutkov said!

And besides, there are not only taxonomists-morphologists. There are entomologists-ecologists, - physiologists of insects, etc. And everyone has a different education and base... If you ask someone who has identified a fly species since the summer about its population biology or diapause, will they answer with confidence and accuracy???

I'm also afraid to answer questions if I'm not sure... Reason: as Bad Den wrote above...

In general, this is sad... There are only 4 main families of synanthropic flies. If you are not sure, then the answer may be different: "I don't know", "I'll check in the determinant now", "it looks like calliforida, but among the muscids there are also species with a metallic sheen - we need to look at it". What will we think of an optometrist who sees panaritium and says, "What is this? I don't know...."
P.S. One mycologist I know said: "I don't pick mushrooms, but I only eat what macromycete specialists have collected - only they are not mistaken!" Question: Who doesn't eat mushrooms for the same reasons?

Mdya, do any entomologist have to touch a fly? he could not remember about them for 7 years, for example, any situation can happen - that's why he did not answer. It's not even that the question is simple, and it's not difficult to collect mushrooms - but that someone is not interested in this, someone has not touched this topic for a long time, and someone may well have a phobia (as in the example with mushrooms)

I wonder if the fact that he recognized the insect as a fly is a sign of what?

It looks like the days of generalist scientists are long gone.

to Juglans:
Thank you for coming by. I remember your statement that any biologist (!) should be able to identify any animal before the class. This is very much in the vein of this discussion.
But the fly was not synanthropic, but caught "in the field". So it's not as simple as you think. But he's a morphologist.
It is clear that if he conducted an annual field practice for students, this situation would not arise.

About no time - it's strange. For the most part, families are easily defined habitually, so take a look and you're done.

The ways of evolution are mysterious and there are 1.5-2 million species of insects in the world, and families are not always established for clearly defined groups. I remember a case where a university professor conducting a field practice claimed that a bug identified by a student as Lygaeus equestris (correctly defined) it is not and that it is Pyrrhocoris marginatus. Well, L. equestris is red and black in color, like P. apterus. Even non-specialists very often confuse bedbugs with cats. Alydidae with carnivores because of the slender body and somewhat similar proboscis. These are all simple cases, but there are nemo and those where only a specialist can understand. Yes, the days of scientific encyclopedists are over, but there is no need to complain about this, because science is becoming more and more complex, more data is accumulating, and if the encyclopedist covered the whole world with his eyes, but saw it barely protruding from the darkness, then the modern specialist, although he sees a piece of the world, but almost all of it is in bright light light.

Well, the examples you give are just a shame! Lygaeus equestris still has a white spot.
And to confuse alidide with reduviids is just wild. This is excusable only for a beginner who has not seen anything other than the determinant.
Of course, there are complex cases. And I do not presume to talk about all insects, but as I wrote above," for the most part " families are still easy to determine, at least if the insect is not too miniature.

PS: Monsieur Tentator, are you by any chance from the university?

This post was edited by le_lapin - 26.08.2007 18: 17

I tried to find an image of P. marginatus, because I can only imagine apterus. I only found one option but there it is black for some reason. P. niger?

Well, the examples you give are just a shame! Lygaeus equestris still has a white spot.
And to confuse alidide with reduviids is just wild. This is excusable only for a beginner who has not seen anything other than the determinant.
Of course, there are complex cases. And I do not presume to talk about all insects, but as I wrote above," for the most part " families are still easy to determine, at least if the insect is not too miniature.

PS: Monsieur Tentator, are you by any chance from the university?

Wildness, of course, and I'm glad you think so. But the cases are real. But to distinguish between the representatives of the sem. Saldidae and Leptopodidae You can just as easily? I agree, of course, that most of the insect families of Europe are well differentiated. But you should at least know these families. Does any university in the country have a special course on insect taxonomy, where the system is considered up to families, and all of them? How would an ordinary entomologist know that? It is said that the late Kryzhanovsky could identify any specimen from any region of the world to the family. Now there are no such people in Zina.

I come from a lot of places

I tried to find an image of P. marginatus, because I can only imagine apterus. I only found one option but there it is black for some reason. P. niger?

Yes, this is P. marginatus. It's not really black, but, I would say, a dark, dark purple. Well, you know, the lady I'm talking about has never seen P. marginatus, and once she misidentified L. equestris, she's decided forever that it's him. This happens to many people: they have no place to get detailed knowledge about the insect system.

This post was edited by Tentator - 26.08.2007 21: 40

[quote=le_lapin,27.08.2007 00:30]

If the fly is "wild", then this is more difficult. Habitually, not everyone differs well, there are many convergences. This is good if we are talking about banal lions, babblers, ktyry, etc. But there are different small families that were separated from the large ones not so long ago. With moths, it is even more difficult: lepidopterologists, specialists in large butterflies, sometimes find it difficult to name the family. At the time of Kryzhanovsky, there were fewer families.
There are many specific families in the Far East, but there is no determinant adapted for the student. They are determined by European standards – it often turns out to be creepy. Our teachers and students have long defined cave crickets as just crickets, because Plavilshchikov, of course, does not have such a family.

to Juglans:
I completely agree with you that there are some groups that are difficult to define. However, what is the number of" banal " families in comparison with the rest (in order not to go far, in the same diptera) and how often do they occur in comparison with non-banal ones?

By the way, if such a request were made to me, I would give out the maximum (within reasonable limits, of course) the information that I know. Here are some possible options:
1) Oh, I see this for the first time! Is it even a fly?
2) It looks like Calliphorida, but I'm not sure
3) Yes, this is Calliphora vicina, no doubt!

And Plavilshchikov and Tyschenko (in the sense of the book, not people of course ) - in the furnace. They cost me a lot of nerves.

This post was edited by le_lapin - 08/27/2007 04: 04

If you only knew how much nerves they cost Far Eastern students! They even try to determine the genera of tipulids from them! We had a dispute on this issue in the department: some people said that the ability to determine is important, not the determinant, and I argued that only the correct definition is important, otherwise the process itself loses its meaning. In practice, there was once a flying moth - an archaic family of beetles, living fossils. So what? They were identified by Plavilshchikov and thrown into the furnace, because it didn't work out - beetles, of course.

This post was edited by Juglans - 08/27/2007 05: 34