Sciaridae (dark-winged fungus gnat) – hairy legs and a beautiful pattern of wing veins

Applause IconJan 07, 2018 • 3:45 AM UTC
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This video shows a member of the Sciaridae family under the foldscope.
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The insect was caught in the flower pot of a ficus benjamini plant using a yellow fly trap.
Its body length is approximately 1-2 mm – too big to image in a single view on the foldscope. Here are multiple images strung together to give a complete view:
Once caught, the specimen are quite difficult to handle as they are really delicate. It looks like in this example the neck was severed during mounting onto the slide, and a few leg parts were lost too. Still, this was the best specimen we got (after quite a few tries).

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