dave said:@JRsBugs is our resident bug expert. What do you think Janet?
Thanks for the call Dave.
I don't really know! It depends largely on how many people here feel the need for one I guess, I know some already post on other forums but these forums don't encompass everything. It's impossible to encompass everything, but I find most people who are noticing insects haven't yet got to the stage of looking for everything that moves like I have.
The significance of that, is it would be 'relatively' easy to ID most insects as it's usually the most common insects which are noticed. Most people don't realise just how complicated and involved insect ID is, or maybe they do, but what I'm getting at is the huge numbers of insects there are of which most people are not aware exist. For example, we have over 250 species of bees (around 280 listed) in the UK, Europe has I think around 600, the US has something like 4,000 bee species alone!
http://bugguide.net/node/view/...
Flies are a different story, the numbers are much larger with a mind-boggling number of species. For example, we have in this country a tiny fly which eats other tiny insects called Platypalpus in the family Hybotidae, they are around 2 to 3mm in size and there's dozens of different species although I think I have only about 4 species. You can't identify them to species without a specimen and a key (if there is a key!), then you need to be able to understand terminology and how it applies so you need experts in the particular family. Genus is about as far as you would get for many insects without a specimen, although there are many insects which can be identified if you have very good photos from many angles and that usually requires a very dedicated photographer with a camera and macro lens with the capacity to capture good enough detail.
Because of the difficulties of determination to species I'm not in favour of a Bug Files as such. There are specialist sites here and in Europe for such as flies, of which I am a member of both, and I have managed to determine to species level many flies I get in my garden but there's plenty more I can only get to genus. I've been at it since around 2006 and it's been a long and difficult journey, but it's paid off as I now can quite easily 'usually' recognise where an insect belongs, and to which family it belongs to. If one starts to put insects into categories with little knowledge of the very similar species which it could be, one soon loses credibility.
That doesn't mean there should not be a place where people can try to find out what they have, and I can help as much as I can. Anyone is welcome to post on my cubit too, but if people would feel more comfortable using a forum here that's fine with me.
