Super Fly, The Unexpected Lives of the World’s Most Successful Insects, Jonathan Balcombe, Penguin Books 2021
Of all the amazing things about flies you can find in this book, that millions – perhaps billions – of hoverflies migrate across Europe each year most surprised me. Many cross the Swiss Alps: “They fly fast … and they don't stop,” one researcher says. “The butterflies are getting turned around like in a tumble dryer, but the hoverflies just shoot straight over.”
Migration is one of my favorite subjects. Monarchs are famous of course, and other insect migrants include wandering gliders, common green darners, and others, but I never knew insects as small as flies might migrate.
In this book you'll find widely varying, intriguing and sometimes almost unbelievable details of fly adaptations, anatomy and life style. Think bees are the most important insects pollinating plants? Balcombe makes a case for flies outdoing bees, including examples of published pictures of “bees” on flowers that are really bee-mimic flies. I've spent some time watching and photographing insects on flowers, and can attest that it is sometimes very hard to tell the flies from the bees.
Think beetles are the most diverse and abundant insect order? While there are still more described beetles than flies in the literature, diperists are working hard to classify new species, and fly numbers are closing in on beetles, with far more new species being described each year.
One intriguing chapter details the service flies offer in forensics, medicine and research. Flies’ invaluable role as waste disposers and recyclers is subject of another chapter. Diverse anatomy of different flies, especially for mating, is colorfully described.
Yes, flies are responsible for great harm to people. A self-acknowledged fly lover, Balcombe doesn't gloss over the damage done by flies as disease vectors, crop and food pests and more. But in the end he makes a strong case for respect and even care for flies, going so far as to suggest that flies may be sentient and feel pain or even pleasure.
As have many others, Balcombe makes the case that all “higher” forms are dependent on flies and other insects. A by now all-too-familiar recounting of the accelerating loss of biodiversity closes the book. The dramatic decline in bird numbers has made big news lately. The even more stunning loss of insects, a major contributor to decline of birds, is not as well documented. The New York Times in 2017 described it as “insect Armageddon.”
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018, cited in this book, says that of all the terrestrial biomass of mammals on Earth, humans make up 36% and our livestock 60%, leaving only 4% for all other mammals, from shrews to elephants.
Dominant? Where would we be without flies and other insects?
Toast.