An Eristalis taeniops hoverfly photographed feeding on a flower having just flown over 100 km from the Middle East to Cyprus. This hoverfly was part of a much larger migratory assemblage of insects making the same journey during Spring 2019. We recorded over 39 million insects arriving on Cyprus at rates up to nearly 5900 insects per metre per minute. Fascinatingly 86% of all the migrating insects were flies, each playing a range of vitally important ecological roles including pollination and nutrient transfer. Photo by Will Hawkes. Full paper here.

