Work has just begun (May 2008)  on a two year project to increase the knowledge of the montane invertebrates of Scotland, which includes all insect orders and spiders. The work, which is mainly funded by Scottish Natural Heritage,  is being managed by staff in the National Museums of Scotland. Other partners include the National Trust for Scotland, the John Muir Trust and Butterfly Conservation Scotland. The project will run for two years and will include an  extensive sampling programme on  mountain sites owned by the partner organisations.

At this time of climatic change it is essential that we obtain up to date information on Scotland’s montane invertebrate species and establish their geographical and attitudinal distribution to act as baselines against which any further monitoring work can be set.

The project comprises of five main areas of work :

• Development of a database of Scottish Montane Invertebrates - to be compiled from specimens in museum collections, literature references and from specimens collected as part of the project
• Sampling and collection of new material - water trap / pitfall trap sampling to be undertaken on 10 mountain sites across Scotland owned by the partners
• Identification of specimens - to be organised by the National Museums of Scotland with resulting specimens added to their collections
• Studies of montane Lepidoptera - survey work undertaken by BC(S) to determine present geographic and attitudinal distribution of montane Lepidoptera concentrating on BAP species such as the Black Mountain moth - as shown in the photograph to the right.
• Analysis and outputs - database of all records of montane species will be made available - scientific papers, seminars and reports.

Hand collecting of specimens by entomologists and volunteers will also form part of the survey effort and hopefully shall provide some more up to date information on the attitudinal distribution of  species such as the montane beetle Nebria nivalis

For the second time the Malloch Society has visited the old growth forests along the Finnish- Russian border. From our base at Khumo we spent 10 days looking for the larvae of saproxylic Diptera (and some Coleoptera) amongst these magnificent forests and, with our usual team-based approach, we found an exciting variety of species.  The full results of our visit have yet to be compiled but we were successful in obtaining larvae from a wide range of families including Syrphidae, Clusiidae, Dolichopodidae, Lonchaeidae, Xylophagidae, Stratiomyidae, Rhagionidae and Tipulidae to name but a few. One of the highlights was finding a larvae of the hoverfly genus Spilomyia, one of the few times that such larvae have been found.

                                            At the end of a hard day !

One of the most interesting species which we found was the spectacular wasp imitating stratiomyid Xylomya czekanowskii, a European red listed species. Larvae were found underneath the bark of a large fallen  aspen tree at only one of the many sites we surveyed, the larvae were confine to the larger parts of the trunk where it is mosslty over 75cms in diameter.

                                 male X. czekanowskii

A paper which shows that Melanostoma dubium and Melanostoma mellinum are not two distinct species but merely part of a continual altitudinal cline can be accessed here

In collaboration with the Association des Amis de la Massane, five members of the Malloch Society visited La Forêt de la Massane in the foothills of the French Pyrenees in May 2003 to survey saproxylic flies in this ancient oak (Quercus) and beech (Fagus) forest that has not been disturbed for

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Seven members of the Malloch Society worked with Finnish and Russian colleagues in the Friendship Nature Reserve in May 2004. The reserve straddles the Finnish-Russian border between Kuhmo in Finland and Kostamus in Russia and is about 400kms north of Helsinki. It was set up in 1990 as the Finnish-Russian Friendship Nature Reserve and is jointly managed

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A visit was made in May 2003 to Stockholm to see the progress made by Hans Bartsch in implementing management techniques for aspen Diptera which we had pioneered in Scotland.

Although aspen is a common tree in Sweden it has suffered a decline in extent

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Extending our work on saproxylic Diptera, in June 2002 the Malloch Society visited the Åland Islands. The visit was made in collaboration with the Helsinki Entomological Society, some of whose members guided us round selected forest sites in these beautiful islands. Malloch Society members demonstrated techniques for finding larvae of saproxylic Diptera.

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