Ojibway BioBlitz draws experts from afar, turns up a robber fly

The second annual Ojibway Prairie BioBlitz took place on the weekend.

The idea of a bioblitz is to record as many species as possible in a 24-hour period.

The bioblitz at Ojibway started Saturday and wrapped up Sunday morning.

The Windsor-Essex region is home to tremendous biodiversity in an urban landscape.

The count on the weekend included amateur volunteers and experts.

Jeff Skevington, a specialist of flies from the Canadian National Collection of Insects, and his 11-year-old son made the trek all the way from Ottawa to participate.

Skevington says there are a lot of bioblitzes every year in Ontario but he really wanted to come to the one at Ojibway.

"It's a very special, unique habitat down here. The long grass prairie here and the savannahs are something that was widespread across southern Ontario and it's the most endangered habitat now in Canada, certainly in Ontario," he said. "So we were really keen to come down."

Skevington discovered a robber fly at the Ojibway Prairie BioBlitz. It's just the second Canadian location in which it's been found, according to Skevington.

Robber flies are predatory flies that, as adults pursue, other flying insects, seize them, and kill them with paralyzing saliva they inject into their prey. The liquified contents of the prey are then sucked up through the proboscis.

Skevington says the weekend heat and humidity made it difficult to find what he was looking for.

"Believe it or not, flies are finicky. We are not working on the kind of flies that everyone thinks of when you think of flies, like house flies," he said. "A lot of them are pollinators of flowers and so they are out in exposed sunlight and so when it gets to 30 C, they are not out there either. They don't like it anymore than we do, so it was a little bit slow at times but it was fun."

Last year, more than 1,100 species were found, including 12 species never before recorded in Canada.