SUFFOLK DIPTERA CHECKLIST
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THE DIPTERA OF SUFFOLK PETER VINCENT Introduction As diptera recorder for Suffolk I find it frustrating that there is no up to date and comprehensive checklist of the flies of Suffolk. My intention, therefore, is over a period of time to compile, as far as possible, a complete a checklist of the diptera of Suffolk. This is a monumental task, the British Isles list of diptera currently (August 2018) runs to some 7171 species (of which 41 are recorded from Ireland only) (Chandler, 2018), a good proportion of which are likely to occur or have occurred in Suffolk. The first checklist of Suffolk Diptera was published by C. Morley and E. A. Atmore in the 1915 Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society (TNNS) (Morley and Atmore, 1915). This enumerated the number of species known to occur in Suffolk as 1623. A supplement to Morley and Atmore’s list in the 1932 TNNS by B. Harwood raised the total to 1887 (Harwood, 1932). In 1945 Morley started an indepth review of the Suffolk diptera as known at the time, including, a species list, records of each and notes on some of the rarer species including some habitat information. From then on Morley published details of a family or a tranche of families annually in the Transactions of the Suffolk Naturalists’ Society (TSNS), until his death in 1951, by which time he had reached the Asilidae. A. E. Aston with collaborators D. Walker and later W.S. George carried on the series from 1954 until the final part, Syrphiidae, was published in 1960. (George & Aston, 1960). Together Morley, Aston and George had made their way through about two thirds of the potential Suffolk diptera, but probably less of the species commonly recorded. What remained was the whole of the Acalyptratae and Calyptratae, some 60 families, containing some of the more familiar and popular groups. As it stands at present, the current Suffolk diptera checklist comprises of the database of submitted diptera records held by the Suffolk Biodiversity Information Centre (SBIS), to which can be added records available from the National Biodiversity Network (NBN). This is far from complete, however, further diptera records from Suffolk are held by the various Dipterists Forum national recording schemes and study groups, and in publications and journals such as the TSNS and the Dipterists Digest. There are unpublished records held by individual collectors. I intend to exploit all these resources to make the checklist as complete as possible. Although for the time being this remains a paper exercise, specimens do exist in museums and other collections, including Morley’s own collection in the Ipswich Museum that could be used to extract more records and also to check on the validity of existing records. The records that form this checklist are from the Watsonian vice-counties of East (v.c. 25) and West (v.c. 26) Suffolk which is of greater extent than the modern administrative county boundaries. Diptera are not well recorded in Suffolk, with few records of even quite common species. Therefore, although records are in the main collected at monad (O.S.1km square) or greater accuracy, in order to assess the
Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 54 (2018)