PFL

PFL is a brutally aggressive competition between adversaries whereby the last fighter physically standing is the winner. Kicks, headbutts, choke outs and punches are fully admissible. Biting, gouging and elbow usage are not allowed. Broken bones, blood, pain and unconscious losers are the norm. There can be only one PFL Champion - the fiercest, the boldest, the fittest, the fastest, the canniest and the strongest fighter will prevail. Huge amounts of money, glory and adoration shower the winner, the runners-up ignored like so much broken dross blowing down a litter strewn gutter, forgotten, overlooked and unloved. Nobodies.

This year I have entered into the PFL competition. My adversaries are Gilbert White's Ghost and Mark 'The Terror' Telfer. It started ugly early into the opening round with a couple of dodgy moves from The Ghost resulting in some name calling from myself. Whilst The Ghost and I were trading our first shin kicks and swinging handbags at each other, The Terror was quietly spending his time in training for the season's madness and boldly made an early claim for leadership!  

So far however, the scorecards show that it is I, The Gibster, who has a clear points advantage. I am the youngster of the group and with by far the least experience, was I acting a fool when I agreed to take on these heavyweight titans in the ring? Will my bold dash for early leadership backfire, will I start to flag and find myself choked out or beaten into submission by my older and wiser adversaries?  

Just to clarify for the totally confused amongst you, I've not actually signed myself up into the Professional Fighters League. No, but I have agreed to a small challenge between friends in an attempt to see as many fly families as possible this year. Mark Telfer, Father of PSL has now come up with Diptera PFL - Pan Family Listing! As background, a large part of my decision to tackle dipteran families this year came about through my following the excellent Fly Guy and his blog hence, by extension, this Challenge has been born. If you're into PSL then, by definition, you're a lister. And listers usually like to have more on their list than the next guy does, even if they won't publicly admit it. Hence part of the concept behind this 'friendly' challenge. Coz yeah, PFL is a dirty game and it takes no prisoners (that holds true for either PFL, I'm not yet sure which will prove to be the meaner and more bloodthirsty!)

Three weeks into the first round the year and here are each combatant's fly family tallies - 

1) Limonidae (Short-palped Craneflies) - Seth

2) Mycetophilidae (Fungus Gnats) - Seth

3) Sciaridae (Black Fungus Gnats) - Mark and Seth

4) Psychodidae (Moth Flies) - Seth

5) Trichoceridae (Winter Gnats) - Seth

6) Anisopodidae (Window Gnats) - Seth

7) Chironomidae (Non-biting Midges) - Seth

8) Hybotidae (Dance Flies) - Mark

9) Phoridae (Scuttle Flies) - Mark

10) Lonchopteridae (Spear-winged Flies) - Mark and Seth

11) Agromyzidae (Leaf-mining Flies) - Ghost and Seth

12) Chloropidae (Frit Flies) - Mark

13) Heleomyzidae (no common name) - Ghost and Seth

14) Sphaeroceridae (Lesser Dung Flies) - Mark and Seth

15) Drosophilidae (Fruit Flies) - Mark

16) Ephydridae (Shore Flies) - Mark

17) Scathophagidae (Dung Flies) - Ghost

18) Calliphoridae (Blow Flies) - Ghost and Seth

There are 107 currently recognised families of fly that occur in Britain. I have no idea if anybody has ever achieved the full suite in a single year, doubtful seeing as some consist of just one or two rare/infrequent species, but I bet the most active (aka hellbent) dipterists could probably achieve 100 families in any given calendar year. It will be interesting to see how many families we manage, both between us and as individuals. 

Currently the scores show The Ghost bringing up the rear with four identified families, then The Terror with eight families and yours truly with twelve families so far. But it's early days. Numerically I have seen less species of fly than has The Ghost, who in turn is slightly behind Mark in terms of the number of fly species on his PSL. I'm badly out of my depth here, but I'm looking forward to seeing how the year progresses for we three amateur dipterists. Very amateur indeed in my instance.

And the prize for the 2020 Pan Fly Listing winner? No mere gold medal, no bottle of champagne, not even a crown of laurel leaves. No, the winner is presented the coveted Halo of Flies presented by Alice Cooper himself!!! (Failing that there's always Wee Alice from the croft over the hill. She looks like a man wearing make-up at the best of times, it's close enough...)

To follow my fly (and beetle) exploits for this year in far greater detail, click the Vision 2020 tab in the navbar above. And then bookmark it, coz it's a good read. Honest!