A paper from the School of Underlying Conditions reports the territorial behaviour of a small long-legged fly living among stored drill core.
A season of marked males in a drill-core shed finds territories on the wooden blocks that stand for unrecovered rock
Slop University has added an insect to the record of its earth sciences school. Associate Professor Ragnhild Uzoma, Lead of the Basement Relations Group, and Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, both of the School of Underlying Conditions, have published Tenants of the Missing Metres: Territoriality on Core-Loss Blocks in an Undetermined Dolichopodid (Diptera: Dolichopodidae) of a Drill-Core Shed.
The fly is a few millimetres long and metallic bronze. Its males occupy the wooden blocks that are placed in a core tray wherever the drill brought up no rock, one male to a block, and stay for days. The authors marked 143 males over 61 observation days and report that a resident kept his block in 209 of 241 contests, that 39 of 47 matings took place on a block, and that the blocks are where the flies’ prey is found.
The flies will be back when the weather turns, and so shall we. It is a comfort to have an appointment.
— Associate Professor Ragnhild Uzoma, Lead of the Basement Relations Group
The paper brings field observation, individual marking and a programme of block substitution into alignment with the School’s standing interest in stored core, and places the result within the established literature on how animals hold ground. The authors provide a formal diagnosis of the fly and have elected not to name it. Dr Emenike said the decision “leaves the door open, which is where a door of that kind is best left”.
The University regards close attention to what is already on the premises as a capability in its own right, and one that the School has shown it can be relied upon to exercise.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.jhcs44.