To follow Alan Stubbs’s article on Aspen dependent invertebrates in British Wildlife last year, the authors delve into the ecology and conservation history of one species in particular.
On 27th June 1905, at Grantown-on-Spey, Invernessshire (now within the Cairngorms National Park), adults of the medium-sized, rust-coloured hoverfly Hammerschmidtia ferruginea (Diptera, Syrphidae) were found in the UK for the first time by Lt. Col. John William Yerbury and Cambridge University librarian Charles Lamb. Appropriately enough, but not at the time knowing the significance, they captured these first adults on Aspen stumps Populus tremula.