There are no snakes in Alaska, so what’s that snakelike shape crossing the road? Few people would guess it’s actually thousands of fly larvae moving in a very peculiar pattern that gives the snakeworm gnat their common name. Dr. Thalles Pereira and his coauthors spent lots of time rearing, observing, and sharing their findings with their community in the process of describing this new species, and use citizen science data of this behavior in addition to morphological and molecular analyses in this paper. Listen in as Thalles brings us through the labs and back roads of Alaska to learn why gnats are so special!

Thalles Pereira’s paper “Discovery of snakeworm gnats in Alaska: a new species of Sciara meigen (Diptera: Sciaridae) based on morphological, molecular, and citizen science data” is in volume 6 issue 2 of Integrative Systematics.

It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.18476/2023.673937

A transcript of this episode can be found here: Thalles Pereira - Transcript

New Species: Sciara serpens

Episode image courtesy of Thalles Pereira via Integrative Systematics Stuttgart Contributions to Natural History

Check out Thalles’ Researchgate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thalles-Pereira-2

Video of the snakeworm larval behavior: https://doi.org/10.7299/X7WM1DQ9

View these specimens and their observational records on Arctos: https://arctos.database.museum/search.cfm?guid_prefix=UAM%3AEnto%2CUAMObs%3AEnto&scientific_name=Sciara%20serpens&scientific_name_match_type=match&family=Sciaridae

Springtail antifreeze protein paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60060-z

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