INHS Reports September-October 1997

PEET: a Training Effort That is Paying Dividends

Systematists, scientists who describe and classify life, have been retiring at a rate greater than they are being replaced, resulting in an ever-dwindling number of trained and active workers. This trend is causing a major crisis in the biological sciences. The crisis is more acute because of the ever-increasing importance of biological diversity in land-use allocation and public policy formulation. Although nearly all of the flowering plants, birds, and mammals are known and described, only about one-fifth to one-tenth of the existing species of most other forms of life are known and described. The very large numbers of undescribed species, including insects, fungi, and bacteria, are important to the functioning of our planet. As such, they need to be described and their ecological relationships better understood.

In an effort to curb this waning of systematists, the National Science Foundation (NSF) recently initiated a program called Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy, or simply PEET. This program funds projects that train the next generation of systematists, use modern electronic methods to organize and assess data and disseminate results, and target for study the most poorly known groups of biota. Most biological projects funded by NSF last about three years; PEET initiatives last five years. The expanded duration and funding level for PEET projects emphasize the importance and urgency NSF places on increasing the quantity and quality of systematists in the U.S.

The first PEET competition took place in May 1995. Michael E. Irwin of the University of Illinois and Illinois Natural History Survey was among the nearly 100 scientists across the country who took part in that competition. Irwin formed a research partnership with Brian Wiegmann of North Carolina State University, a molecular dipterist; David Yeates of the University of Queensland, Australia, a fly systematist interested in modern methods of classification; F. Christian Thompson of the United States Department of Agriculture's Systematic Entomology Laboratory, a specialist in fly nomenclature; and Donald Webb, a fly systematist, and Gail Kampmeier, an entomologist who specializes in modern electronic databasing and dissemination, both of the Illinois Natural History Survey. This team's proposal focused on stilettoflies, a group of sand-dwelling flies belonging to the dipterous family Therevidae. Irwin and his team successfully garnered 1 of the 21 PEET grants awarded during the first competition. Irwin approached the Schlinger Foundation and obtained supplemental funds to train students and collect and study stilettoflies in remote areas where these flies are unknown but probably extremely diverse and abundant.

Why study stilettoflies? After all, they are small (3-15 mm in length), relatively secretive in nature, infrequently encountered, and, thus, rare in collections. In fact, a scant 840 species in 79 genera are currently recognized worldwide. However, we estimate that between three and four times that number of species actually exists. Stilettofly adults are diurnal; most species imbibe water and a few are known to feed on nectar and plant exudates. The larvae are voracious predators of immature insects that live within sandy soils and leaf litter. The sleek, snakelike larvae move rapidly through such substrates. Because they are abundant in sandy substrates and because they feed on a variety of insects, stilettoflies appear to be critical to the sound
PEET contingent sifting for therevid larvae in West Cape Province,
South Africa.

functioning of arid and semiarid ecosystems. They appear to provide a balance in maintaining environmental health in fragile, xeric ecosystems, and it is important to assess the separate functional roles of species in natural environments and in those that are managed, such as forest, agriculture, rangeland, and garden ecosystems. The team believes that the richness of adult stilettoflies in a habitat is a good indicator of habitat heterogeneity and that the abundance of individuals is a particularly good measure of subterranean productivity. Furthermore, they believe that stilettoflies should be considered as potential or actual biological control agents because they play an important role in the suppression of pest larvae in sandy agroecosystems.

In all, there are five students currently attached to this PEET grant. Three are with the University of Illinois and the Illinois Natural History Survey: Steve Gaimari, Mark Metz, and Kevin Holston. One, Longlong Yang, is in Wiegmann's lab at North Carolina State University, and another, Shaun Winterton, is in Yeates' lab at the University of Queensland. All are making remarkable progress on various aspects of stilettofly systematics. Progress is also being made on databasing and information dissemination. For more information on this topic, you are invited to log into our Web site at: http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cee/wwwtest/therevid/stiletto_fly.html

Michael Irwin and Gail Kampmeier, Center for Economic Entomology

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