Tonight we're visiting a world of insects. Insects are enormously important, you know real are something like possibly as much as 90% or even more of the animal species that we have. They occupy many different habitats, largely but not exclusively terrestrial, and they're spread all across the globe. Insects are undergoing a catastrophic decline and I expect Erica is going to mention that to us. And since they are at the heart of many of our planetary ecosystems, this is a considerable concern. However, although we know quite a lot about some insects, there are some that we know less about, one of which is the flies, the diptera. To many of the audience, flies might mean something, mages, blue bottles, house flies, but actually this is an enormously diverse group of organisms. We're very fortunate tonight to have with us an international expert on this group, Dr. Erica McAlister. Erica is a well-known scientist, she's a senior curator at the Natural History Museum in London. She's an honorary fellow of the Royal Integral Society. But more importantly for us this evening, she's passionate about flies, and so she's going to speak to us this evening about the changing chain of flies. So thank you very much, Erica. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yeah, I've got a loud voice at the best time. So I, and I would get excited, so sorry. So thank you for that introduction, it's lovely. I like being an international scientist. So, yes, I'm very, very lucky. I'm going to talk to you tonight about some of the things that slightly obsessed me. I won't necessarily be going into all the ecology about flies, but I want to talk about certain things about them to help explain their actions. So, okay. So I'm very lucky. I work in the Natural History Museum in London. Now I know you've got a lovely museum here and have to careful because there's a retired person in the audience who worked at that museum, and I say it's lovely, but I am biased and we do have the best. Sorry. And I think globally we have one of the best museums because when you come to the museum when you walk into the galleries, all you're seeing is 1% of our collection. Behind the scenes, along with a load of wise and old scientists like myself, there's 80 million specimens. So we have what is described as a temple to natural history. We hold the biological heritage, along with all the other museums and all the other collections in the world to help us understand the past, and also nowadays more importantly, to understand the future. So we can go into these collections, we can mine them, we can understand all sorts of things when it comes to climate change, biodiversity, tax on me, etc. Now I'm very biased because I work with the best animals on the planet. Obviously I work with the flies. Now I know that some of you may not feel exactly the same as I do, but trust me, once you've started looking at flies, no other animal plant, bacteria, fungi comes quite close to it. And I'm really lucky I managed to go around the globe to very exciting places. Yes, this is me hoovering a pig in Hounds Low City Farm, wasn't so glamorous. But there is yes taking photos of feces. As a fly specialist my mother is very embarrassed about certain of my habitats but I will hang around feces. But I am very interested in going around the world describing species. So if it wasn't for the pandemic I'd spend most of my time in the Caribbean. Thank you taxpayers. It's very nice. Obviously I have to describe species with rum it's very important. But I will bring them back and study them in the museum. And these specimens where we added towards this wealth that we have there already. Now I'm not the first person to describe insects. Nope, I'm not the first person to describe animals. We've been doing it for millennia. But it was only with Linnaeus that we actually started properly to organize how we did this. And Linnaeus is brilliant. You know he organized a lot of us. He did it in a language that we could all universally understand. And now universally don't understand. But it's something that was very important. But when he started describing flies. So here we got muskid domestica, the housefly that everyone knows. The description is really limited. Small black fly. That's about another 9,000 species you've just described. And he had no picture with it. We didn't know what earth we were looking at. It didn't really help us. So we needed more things. And the advent of the microscope pretty much at the same time really helped things kick into gear. I was given a talk at a boys school at the weekend. And they had one of the first editions of micrographia. And try as I might they wouldn't give it to me. It's like come on, surely I deserve it. Because Robert Hooke's micrographia, you must have all seen this. It's a fabulous book. And what was amazing is when he was looking down his tiny little microscope. And I've held one of these. They're absolutely my new little things. He was describing everything that was close to him. So he was describing some really quite revolting things in many ways. He did a lot of lice. He did some pubic lice. We don't want to know much about his personal habits. But he also because of he was looking close to him. He did a lot with flies. Now this is a really quite a fun example. But this is he describes a half life. So it's one of the earliest taxonomic failures I've come across. Because this is actually a horse fly. But what you can see here is he's really looking at the detail. He is looking at the individual eye facets on this head of this horse fly. So you can start to see that there's bands, there's patterns. And if you think about this, how old this book is, 250, 470 years old. And he's looking at the detail of this. It's amazing. You can look at the detail within the life cycle of the fly. And this is really important. They first started to really properly get to grips with describing these objects and how they look. And nowadays we have all sorts of technology to help us look. So this is you staring into the head of a blue bottle. Brilliant, isn't it? It's fabulous. Well, you may not think so, but I do. And this female is really quite important. And what is lucky for me is when we're describing it, all the features I want to describe, I can clearly see thanks to technology. So it's got me thinking properly. And my last book was about the shape of flies and why they are shaped. Because what flies have done is they've taken that blueprint. This is what you and most people think of as a fly. And they've just laughed in the face of it. OK, they like, no, you think that's a fly. I'll show you a fly. So before I get into that, I'm going to tell you what a fly is. And then I'm going to show you everything that a fly isn't. So here we go. This is quite a famous fly. Obviously these are crane flies, daddy long legs. And lots of myths associated with daddy long legs, because lots of people don't know which one is a daddy long legs. That's the problem with common names. So when we talk about flies and we think about common names, and we have a movie about a horse and a ghost, then there's a fly, either a real fly's flies, a may or flies, flies? No. When you're talking about true flies, if there's a house fly, there's a space between the words, it's a fly. Dragon fly, damsel flies made flies, one word. This is this is a fly從 insect, as I said. In fact, it's got three pairs of legs. If you know anything about crane flies, you'll know that's a bit of a joke because the slightest hint that their legs fall off. Our collection in the Natural History Museum is basically bodies and heads and whole drawers of legs. It is quite traumatic to see. You've got the three body segments, the head, thorax and abdomen. And yes, in most cases, flies stick to this. In most cases.  So as an adult, and we're just gonna talk about it, they have sartorial mouth parts. You have never been bitten by a fly. You've been sliced and mained and shredded and siphoned, but you have never been bitten because they can't do that. They have one pair of wings as adults, hence their name, diptera, dieterra, two wings. So unlike the hymenotra, the bees and wasps that have two pairs and the beetles that have two pairs, they only have one pair. And instead, they have the most amazing organs, the hawthairs, which act as their balancing organs. And these hawthairs are their proprioceptors. They're their gyroscopes. They enable them to be the best aerial flyers out. So they can loop the loop, they can yaw, they can roll, they can land upside down on the sea. When you're in your living room, flying around their lamp, have a look exactly how they fly, because it is quite amazing. Now, I saw those three things making a fly.  They look like nothing as they should do. Yay! Here you go. Cute, isn't it? Well, never trust me when I say something cute because it's bound to be horrible. Just saying now. This is actually the backside of a larvae, a crane fly. So that very long length of larvae is quite cute. Now, the thing is about flies, they like a lot of insects go through a complete metamorphosis. So they go from a larval stage, egg stage sometimes, a larval stage sometimes, pupil stage and an adult stage. And this change in life cycle has enabled them to explore so many different habitats because they're separating out what the larvae and the adults eat. And the larvae are designed to eat. They really, if I'm coming back, I'm coming back as fly, because 90% of your life is just eating. It's fabulous. And to enable them to just concentrate on eating, they don't breathe with their mouths like us. If we tried to eat all the time, we would choke. So their bottom is what they breathe through.  Isn't that nice? Breathe in out of your bottom. It's an amazing adaptation. There's some really quite cute ones. Look at these.  So we go around identifying a lot of the immature flies by their bottoms. Again, it's a unique skill. I didn't think I'd have as an undergraduate, but they're quite cute. A lot of them look like army generals and things like this. But this is your common fly. Yes, maybe this is a fly. This is the head. Maybe it's a head that only some mothers will love, but it is quite amazing. So again, this is quite a higher fly. This is one of the blue bottles designed for scraping out dead and decomposing material. And the thing about a lot of the larvae is that they are designed perfectly for their habitat. They're like, they've got no legs. We call them precocious because they emerge earlier than a lot of the other insects.  So this is the amorphous little thing that can wiggle itself into all sorts of unique habitats. And some of them are not exactly pleasant. This is a common fly that you get in all your gardens. And you must thank this fly. Have you seen this fly? Does everyone know this little larvae? One nod of head. This is an amazing fly. It's a very, very common fly. And in fact, relatives that are still flying around at the moment, which is unusual. And see, this is the hoverfly. This larvae is the rack-tailed maggot, which some people now decided to call long-tailed larvae because rack-tailed maggot didn't sound as nice, but I'm going to keep it. And what these are good is these larvae are decomposers. So they eat all the dank decomposing vegetable matter. And in your garden, in the pond, the really dark dank edges, that's where they are. And because they have this enormously long annual spherical, they can get really deep into this anoxic environment. So they're great at nutrient recycling. So this is really important. If you go into your compost heap, my neighbors love me, she's doing again. She's through a compost, obviously. And I'm looking there to see whether we've got these. We're doing hoverfly legumes for all of these creatures now. Really important part of the environment. And then amazingly, they're adults, completely different, feed on completely different, really, really important pollinators. We're only just beginning to realize how important flies are for pollination. So this is one of the top, I think it's six pollinators in the UK. This group, they're really, really important. They're not as fun as some more I'm going to talk about in a minute, but they are just very good. This is another hoverfly. And this is one of the UPOIDs. It comes over, this is really cool because this is a migratory hoverfly. So this travels across Europe. We have just been using, my friend is in the Pyrenees right now, staring up into space, looking at all the hoverflies flying across the Pyrenees. They have worked out not me. They have worked out that up to four billion insects turn up in the UK each year. Most of them are hoverflies. And this is really important because this and the marmalade hoverfly do the exactly the same work as all the honeybees in the UK just to put that impact. Now, not only are the adults amazing pollinators, what they do because they're so high up, they're able to see relic populations of plants and so they're able to be really good at bucking the trend of species loss when it comes to genetics of plants. So they're able to cross pollinate as they go. Really, really important. And then their larvae, they don't feed on this decomposing material. No, the volatile warfare units, they eat aphids that aphidophagus and they can consume 400 aphids before they get to adulthood, which is great. They are just amazing things. They do look like bird feces. There's no getting around it, but if you see some walking bird feces in your garden, go find your aphids, put it on and it would be doing you an amazing thing. So they're really important when it comes to our agro-ecosystems in the UK. Now, so I've come in all shapes, as I said. I love them, here's some UK flies as well as some foreign flies. These two are in my garden. These are some of the hovels. This is Maradona clutches.  I won't swear, they're that close to flirting the entire time. They are designed to flirt. Everything about them. Look at this one. This is a dolly coated front legs of ribbons. It dances for the ladies. We've got this one here, which has basically got a whisk on its abdomen. So he was stroked the lady with his hairy genitalia. Isn't that attractive? And you have all these different things going on, but it's not only just for our poor flirting, there is different adaptations, these mouth parts for seedy. So when, and this one here with a bright red head, when this was described, they described it as bioluminescent and it was completely made up. It's the periods where no one checked anything. But yeah, I saw this fly and it did this. Didn't, did it? No, but no one's gonna check. Annoyingly. But it is one of the most dramatic flies and we don't know anything about it. It's in Africa. It's one of the largest species, most enigmatic found across the whole of Africa. Where's the larvae? So when we talk about the head, which I'm gonna do, as I'm gonna break this talk down to the head, the thorax and the abdomen. Because these are different parts concentrate different organs. And the head is where you have the vision. Now they all talk about flies being disgusting and dirty. Flies have to be some of the cleanest animals on the planet because they hang around dirty environments like your houses. Now your houses are filthy. I'm sorry, you're all filthy.  Now this is very important for flies and they will come in and they will use all their senses to find you and the food. So they have to keep themselves very clean. And one of the most important senses they had to keep clean is the eyes. Now, some of them have taken their eyes to extraordinary levels. These we've unimaginably called the big headed flies. Yep, these are papunculates and they have, you can see thousands of omatidium. Now dragon flies are the ones that we say have got these most omatidium.  So they have about 30,000. They have loads. Now flies saw dragon flies. I mean, I can't be bothered to do that. And instead, within each photo unit, where with the other insects, you've got a single fused ragdome where all the different photo cells are fused together with the color ones at the bottom, flies have split them. So flies now in each omatidium have six different angles where they can take an image. So when you try to swat a fly, which obviously none of you do ever, this is why they can just go, because they see you as a really slow, lumbering creature. It's like being in the matrix. They could just move out of the way because they're able to process this really, really quickly. In fact, with some of the work with the hover flies, they are looking at this to develop jump jet technology for super planes based on how they can move. Now, what I love in this one is usually the males have the largest omatidium at the front and these are called love spots. They really are, because he has to find the ladies. She is just interested in food. He is just interested in her. It's quite like humans really. But in this case, we've got very large omatidium on the females because she actually needs to find some very active, fast moving creatures within which to lay her larvae because she's a paratoid.  So she has to have the big eyes. But as I said, they use them for flirting. This is Akias Roschardia. It's an amazing, it's one of the stalk-eyed flies. Love stalk-eyed flies. What I love is this evolved independently 22 times in flies. It's like some flies got together and went, you've seen Jeremy, you've seen his omates. Can we get Bob to do that?  And these will, they will rut like deer. Okay. And I was looking at some little ones in Ethiopia and to my PhD supervisor family and told me off, like, you're meant to be doing an adult work. And I was like, no, but look at the flies. And for two hours. And if they were the same size, that's when they would fight. And these ones, go away and look it up on YouTube.  Really sweet. But obviously I'm an adult, but amazing. And if you look at the development of the optic nerve in the puparium, what's going on is it develops like a coil. And so the nerve will grow and grow and grow. Then immediately the adult hatches out of the puparium. It will engulf air and it will blow up its eye stalks. And you can see the optic nerve being blown out along with it. So it's quite an amazing process. Mouth parts are also found on the head.  It's an adorable fly. Therefore, you know, something's bad about it. Yes, this is the reindeer bot fly. So absolutely cute, but it has the larvae which I affectionately call the snot bots. Because guess where they live in the reindeer? There. Now the adult does not feed at all. It may have a sip of water, but that is it. Because it is the larvae that is basically solely there to feed and provide enough nutrients for the adult stage. Now these adults migrate with the reindeer. They can migrate, the moose one migrates with moose. So you're talking, you're tracking them for hundreds of kilometers. There's some horrific experiments where they glued them to a piece of string and made them fly continuously to measure how long these can go for. And it is kilometers after kilometers. But in the museum, we have some micro CT scanners now. And so this enables us to look within the pupil, within this hidden stage of the development of what's going on, which we couldn't do before. We didn't know whether it was a continual progression or stops and stops. And it is stops and stops. But we were also curious to see what was happening to the internal structures. Now my colleagues, they got these botflies. This was a sheep nasal botfly. And they wanted to see what was going on. Now the larval stage, it is basically also livery glands and guts. So everything about it is designed to actually consume and lay down all these loopholes. And then during the puparium stage, these stages here, before it was merged, basically this, it just disappeared completely. And in some skies, the guts don't even link to the mouth parts anymore. The mouth parts are purely there for looking pretty. They have no function whatsoever. So it's amazing that they've done this. But as most of you know, they do have mouth parts and some have very long mouth parts. These are amazing. So everyone knows about Darwin's moth and the longest mouth part and how it helped with the theory of evolution and everything. It's good, but it isn't a fly. And in body length, this fly's mouth part is one of the largest in the insect world. So if it was a human, your tongue would be six meters long just to put it in reference.   So what this does is this ratchets it underneath and flies with the mouth part dangling out the back of it. When I saw them in South Africa, I did have to take a moment not to giggle because they do look quite ridiculous. But they have co-evolved with many of the plants. And in South Africa in the Cape, it's known for its flora and one of the many reasons is because you've got a truly unique population of flies there. And if this fly was to die out, eight species of flower, eight species of plant would go immediately. What I like about them is a lot of them are specialist pollinators of Erica's. I was like, ah, isn't that nice? This is our version, which is very cute. This is our beef fly bombillius major, which is my what I call it the advent of spring. It's why I'm late for work the whole of April basically because I keep seeing these in my garden. And what they do is they too can expand their mouth parts. So they are able to get really deep into the flower, into the stems of the flowers to get to the nectar. So they really are important early pollinators. And it is quite amazing to see them. Some of them are thieves. There's no getting around it. Some of them won't bother. Just was stabbed through the base of the plant, which is quite sneaky. But they look so adorable, we let them off. There is a math part that we don't like to let off. And that is the mosquito. And a lot of people don't like this.  She's driven to do this for the sake of her unborn children. And I got to put that in your head like that. Because only the females are blood feeders. Basically, this is the same with most of the blood feeders. The only other example where they're not is the taxi flies with a male's blood feed as well. But it's always the female, every other case, because she needs the extra nutrient for egg development. Not all mosquitoes blood feed. And most of them will only need to do it once. But it's been quite interesting when you look at this. And clever people have looked at mosquitoes and thought, you know what, we don't actually realise when they're actually biting us. We only realise afterwards when we have a reaction. So how on earth is that happening? And is there something we can think about this when it comes to medicine? So what they did is they looked at what was going on. Now, this is really quite cool. And maybe a little bit creepy for some of you. But the mouth parts, the bit that comes underneath the stylet, it moves around underneath your skin. Because at the end of the mouth part, they've got sensory receptors that are able to sniff out the blood in your capillaries. So it can move around and miss all sorts of amazing things. Now remember, this mouth part has got no muscles in it. So all of the action is being controlled by the hydrostatic motion and by the mouth parts. She's got several pumps in her head where she controls the delivery and the uptake of what's going on. So she can deliver the antihistamines, the histamines, sorry, and she can get anaesthetics. She can deliver all that and she can take out the blood. But what else is really important is that when she pierces the skin, she doesn't just pierce it, she's basically got a pneumatic drill. So she will do that. And she's able to pierce your skin with so much less force. I believe it's about 400 times less force than if she was to just stab her mouth part in like that. Now, we've been suffering a pandemic recently and everyone's been having injections. And they've been thinking about this because the phobia of injections and they're now developing smart needles based on mosquito mouth parts. So next time you get pierced by one, just say, thank you, have a little bit of blood and it'll be okay. But it is quite amazing how we're using them now. They're also using the oviposter, the egg-laying tube of wasps. So I don't know which is the better one to have a needle developed from. The final sensory organ on the head is the antennae and neither that is. Talking about mosquitoes, mosquitoes have what we call a cocktail effect. So a male mosquito, if he's in a room, you know when you're at a party and you can hear your name being mentioned at the back of the room and you can zone out all the other voices and just hear what's being said about you. Well, if a female mosquito flies past the male and she has picked his interest, he can cone out everything else, completely zone it out and figure out her because they've got amazing sensory. In fact, the hearing on a mosquito is a lot better than ours. They have at the base of them, these Johnson's organs that are enabled them to hear much better, but they've also developed strange annotations on the antennae. We've got these pappals here. We don't know.  We know these are very good. It's a, this is a kind of, this is a punk fly, a parasitic fly and it's got a bowl inside of its head there so it's able to again concentrate the noise. And then we have these ones which has really long antennae. So these don't use their antennae for listening. They use them for territory guarding. So these are midges. These are very, very old flies. In many ways they're kind of like sisters to the rest of us. And they don't land as adults. He's not alive for a long time. It's a male adult, but he will hover over the stream where he wants where the female will come and lay her eggs and he will guard his territory with his antennae. It's rather sweet. But not all of them have antennae on the head. We moved into the abdomen, a thorac, sorry. And this is generally where we consider the locomotory organs. But this is again, this is another punk fly, this is another parasitic fly and it has, is this going to work? No. See this fat summa segment, this orange segment behind its eyes, near the spherical, near the hole. These are unique to this fly and these are like a hearing aid. Now the fly is very small. So it's very hard. It's like we've got a nice big gap between one ear and the other ear. So we were able to triangulate very nicely where the noise comes from. Fly is a small, really small. And so for it to triangulate, it's not really going to do that. And again, this fly is after grasshoppers, the crickets and very fast moving insects for which to lay its leg in. So it's developed this resonance thing, which basically it's seesaws in it and it's able to amplify the sound. So it is able to properly over really long distances for it like 30 centimeters, huge distances for the fly and mimic to amplify the noise. Now again, this is technology that we've looked at and they're developing very, very small hearing aids based on this.  But the rest of the thorax and tract muscles body fell in hairs. It's a problem if you're identifying because we have to identify them on their hairs. Hairs facing forward means it's a different fly from hairs facing back, which is great when all the hairs are falling off. But the hairs are very important. What for? We don't know in 99% of the cases, but there's some really lovely cases where we do. Now not only is their body covered in hair, their body's covered in cuticular hydrocarbons, these lipids, and they're amazing. And they change with the age of the fly, the sex of the fly, the species of the fly, all sorts of things. But they also combined with the bristles enable flies to go scuba diving. Now lots of insects go diving. We see this all the time, beetles do it. Everyone knows this, what's so important Erica, it's crazy. So this fly is able to scuba dive in the mono lakes of California. And if you know these lakes, they're the most saline environments on the planet. And salt disrupts all the chemistry normally on the surface of the insects, but not with this fly. So not only is the chemistry helping, but also the shape of the bristles. And as physicists have discovered, the angle in which he penetrates the lakes and they do it at a specific angle every time. And what she does is she hits the water, she crawls down and she lays her larvae at the bottom. Now larvae are fine, they can survive in these environments, but nothing else can.  So this is brilliant. They've got no predators, they've got loads of food. And once she's done that, she lets go of the bottom and then she's like, wing, out she comes. Which would be amazing. I'd love to see all these flies topping out the water. But what I find really, really cool is that her eye is not covered. And I don't know, we don't know why. So obviously it's good because she can't see it. So she can see, but how did this happen? Why does the eye not need to be in the plastron? Flying is unknown for flying. This is definitely something they're very good at. And they've got amazing wings.  And this is the New Zealand cannibal fly. It's not a cannibal. This is a game why you shouldn't listen to common names. But these, these are our common flies. I think all the whole fly is more known for flying. Next and third fly. As I said, they do huge migrations. We are now looking at them migrating across Australia, all across America and Europe. Some even fly from Northern Africa into the UK. So we are seeing quite amazing things. In fact, first animals into space was a fly in 1947. So a client like that. But not all of them fly. Some of them don't have any wings at all. This is really cute teddy bear. It's an ecto parasite, which means it's not a true parasite, sorry, it's a klepto parasite. It's an ecto-plepto parasite. I can't say that after a few whiskeys. And what it does is it lives on the back of a queen bee. Now, many of you males with beards, I think you should really appreciate these things because what they do is they come down and feed around the mouth parts of the queen when she's got her food all over her face. So they're really little, lovely little clean image she. But isn't it amazing?  So how on earth does the queen not throw them off? Again, it's down to these hydropaths because these have basically got essence of bee all over them. Whether they mimic it or whether they smother themselves in the queen, we do not know yet, but they smell just like her. Hence why she doesn't get rid of them. We've got rid of them though, because we put miticides in all the beehives, didn't get rid of the mites, but they got rid of these. Luckily, they're making a comeback, which is nice. These are my favorite parasites. They, I mean, look at them, adorable. And I spent all day, day-to-day, on the way up here, I was cleaning up images of these flies, I love them. Now, these are, again, wingless flies, and these have gone back. This is the one that's made into the wildlife photography of the year. It's like, yay, excellent, they have some flies in there. They're not usually this big, I have to say. And these wingless flies are amazing because they've got no wings. The thoracic muscles have just basically disappeared. And so when the fly is not feeding, the resting stage of the head is pinged back against the abdomen, thorax of the fly. Look at their claws. They're perfectly designed to live on these bats, to hang on. These are ones I collect in the Caribbean, kind of little cute fatties. And what is amazing about these is they give birth to live young. So we generally think of this as a mammal thing, but these are truly, they get pregnant and they have internal lactating glands.  So they really are quite amazing mothers. Look at them. I think they're quite cute. When you find them in the world, bats get really angry really quickly. And these basically look like drunken spiders. So you're trying to pick them off with forceps. There's an angry bat squealing at you. There's students all around you. You're trying to be professional. It's 11 o'clock at night. It's not the most adult or field work. Moving on to the legs. Legs are brilliant. They enable them to walk around when they have legs. But they also have all sorts of strange structures or other things. This is a fly I've just described from a Caribbean. This is a house fly. Got very hairy legs. I named it after my friend. She's got very hairy legs. I don't know if she appreciated me, but that was my wedding present to her. But they also have different uses for their legs. Well, there's a lot of flies, especially when there's in this group called M-pids and Dolly's do it as well. They give gifts, not your gifts. The way to a female's heart is to feed her. And in many ways, it's like a analogy of a box of chocolates. So it used to be that they would go up, he'd find a fly, give her a fly or something else. She'd eat it. He'd have his wicked way with her and everything was brilliant. But not always because many a time she fed too quickly and she would leave him mid-cop.  And so the mouse had to figure out another way of dealing with this. So what a lot of them did was they developed silk glands. So on their legs, they've got these silk glands. These expanded acetarsis in their feet, which he will produce silk. He will catch something and he will wrap it around. So now he's given her a box of chocolates. He's all wrapped up and wonderful. And this is great. And she will feed and it's brilliant. But now you've got the opposite happening which has taken too long. He's like, ah, finished. And some of the cases, he takes back the half-eaten box of chocolates and re-wraps it. Brilliant. Evolution happens. Things develop. Mowers have gone, hold on. Why do I even bother to find a fly? I'm just gonna give her an empty ball. And now you've got these saliva balloons that a lot of these flies give. So they're completely empty. Some of them will stick things like diatoms in, bits of algae to make them look pretty. And nutritionally, you could say there's a little bit to gain about saliva, but it's not a lot now, is it? Well, at least that's something because there's another group, Ransomaya, which you've got some here in Scotland. They have gone even further and they've gone, you know what? We're gonna let the ladies do the work. And we do not really see this in the animal kingdom where the females have a secondary sexual characteristics. Us humans do, but in many cases, it's always the male showing off. So in these flies, they have what? They've got massive wings.  For example, this is a Stratiomyod soldier fly and her abdomen is wider than she is long. Can you imagine that as a bottom? It's fabulous. And it shows she's gonna be an excellent mother, apparently. So, and I do like these, these are Stratiomyod. They do make these fat bottom flies. They make my rocking well go round. Now I've got that stung in my head now. So we're on to the abdomen, the final bit of the insects of the fly. And this is basically the most important part because this is where the reproductive organs are. But there's also some sneaky stuff going in there. And one of them is found in the larval stage. So this is in New Zealand. This is a group of flies called Keroplatids. They're a type of fungus mat. And in their version of kidneys, the mouth figure and tribules, they bioluminesce. And this is a unique bioluminescence to them. It's not the same enzyme as you find in other bioluminescent creatures. And also, because they're flies, they always come with a slight something bad is gonna happen.  So they would dissolve food. So they're fishing. They're attracting them with a lure. They're fishing for them.  Now they're highly territorial. So if another larvae goes up to another larvae, they will try and eat it. And these are the famous glow caves of New Zealand. My mom came back and all I saw these lovely things and I'm like, ah, there's a fly. It didn't take me. But I'm a fly person and we're always talking about genitalia. And it's not because we're weird. It is because of some very important thing because genitalia is basically the first thing to change when you have new species. When it comes to morphology, which is why we look at genitalia. Now, if you hang around fly people, fly people are always like, females are really boring, males are where it's at. And they're talking about flies, obviously, but it becomes quite painful after a while. So it's always nice to highlight when there's some really good ovipositors out there. And the ovipositors are the egg-laying tubes. Now this is a true fruit fly and these have this huge ovipositor and that's it in a resting position and she will lock it into shape when she's about to lay her eggs. Now, what is amazing about this is you have this hidden world going on, but at the end of her ovipositor, again, you've got, it's a chemical sensors and she's able to prod through the fruit or whatever she's laying in to see whether it's good or not. And some of them will leave chemical signatures behind to tell the other fruit fly ladies, come and lay your eggs here. This is great because the more they can get in, the greater chance if they get attacked, that one of them will survive. So it's to building as many. But we do have to talk about males because they do have some extraordinary genitalia.  They have, I think these are these curly whirling machines that you get in doctors and dentist surgeries, the ones that buzz. This one is shaped like a corkscrew. It's quite nice. You can open bottle of wine with that one. And this has enabled some extraordinary sperm wars with inside the female. So there is amazing thing going on.  He's trying to get his sperm up there as further as possible to get rid of all the other sperm. And this has resulted in what's called mega sperm. So your fruit flies are quite exciting. That fruit fly flying around, it's a three millimeter long fly. It's got a one millimeter, sorry, sperm, which is huge. This is his cousin, Drosophila bifurca. Again, it's a three millimeter long fly. Her sperm is 5.8 centimeters long. So that's the equivalent of a male producing a sperm whale, which is quite shocking if you put it in those sorts of figures. But it is because there's so much competition. And it's not over there. If she does get pregnant, and these are your little bat flies again, some extraordinary things can happen at the final stage. So she, this is a, and remember, don't trust me with a smiley face, because a smiley face usually means you're looking at the bottom. And yes, once more, you're looking at the bottom. But she's got pregnant. She looked like a normal fly to start with. She's got pregnant.   That is what she looks like now. That is an extraordinary adaptation to go through. So this is it, flies are extraordinary. Because they get everywhere, they can do everything. Their morphology is amazing. This is a marine fly that rows around. It's got paddles for wings or wings for paddles, front legs for oars. It's an extraordinary creature. This is one of my favourites. This is a UK species. This is a robber fly. Everything about it is designed to be the apex predator it is. These are even venomous. They have new venoms to science. The family name is acyllidae. The venoms are called acylins. So you can now know 10 venoms, because they're called acyllin 1, acyllin 2. It's very... Look at them. And a lot of them even have moustaches. And I think this is very nice as a female of a certain age. So they're absolutely adapted to being predators. In her 2017 work, The Secret Life of Flies, the entomologist Erika McAllister estimated that for each person on Earth, there are how many flies? The figure in question is about the population of Zambia or the Netherlands. You can have 3 million either way. My phone went berserk at this point. 6 million? No, it's 17 million. Amazing, isn't it? It is amazing. And that's the thing. Now, there are so many flies. There are so many different ecological niches. There's so much we have to learn about them. So my parting thing is to please go away, have a look in your garden, have a look in your house and have a look at their amazing morphology and really become to understand their ecology. Thank you. Thank you very much, Erika. So now we're going to have a very short break so that the people at home can type their questions into the Q&A. And the people here in the lecture these last in a couple of minutes can also ask questions. OK? OK, Erika, you're welcome. Do we have any questions from the audience? Do we have questions from the audience? If you just put your hand up. We're seeing that flies in this situation are so seeded and sorted. How long does it take to become a flyer? Oh, let me just repeat that. But if you can, I'm going to have a question for you. Will you come and help me with this?  OK, number one, the same things. Horseflies, clads are horseflies. But it's interesting because you get different ones flying at different angles. You've got females coming at you. I guess if she feeds slightly differently, she slices your flesh and laps up the pool in blood. So she's got a slightly different mechanism and she's a little bit more cumbersome than a lot of the other flies that you're trying to swat. And she's attached to your body in some way. If you come behind her, she hasn't got the same vision in the same way. The males have got all the head. It's haloptic. It's all eyes so they can see all around. Again, with the mosquitoes, they've got much better vision behind as well. So I'm guessing she just can't see it in the same way. I haven't killed horseflies, young man. And you shouldn't be doing that. But it's worth having a look. They did a lovely investigation recently where they dressed horses up with different coats to see whether the horseflies could see them. And what they did find is that if you were probably actually Maggie, and the lady behind you and the red, you're probably the most appropriate act not getting bitten by horseflies wearing that. Because they like dark colors. So if you go out looking like a zebra or you go out with spots, they find it really difficult to differentiate. So it's the change with the darkness and the lightness. So things like that will impact them. So maybe it's because you've got dark trousers on, but a light top. You should wear different clothes and find out. Go sacrifice yourself with science. So you're asking about the bioluminescence in these predatory larvae. Now in the actual larvae, it's not the dungy bits, the bioluminescence. So they have, although they have an open lint system, so it's not like us with the closing system, they still do need to filter. And their version of a kidney, so it's not totally like us, is what's called the Malfigurian tubules. And it's in that, that they've got this bioluminescent chemical reaction. Are they spinning else? No, that's in their body, but it glows. So the dungy bits sparkle.  Dead. OK, one more question from the audience. I'm so very interested in the eyes of the client. I'm not very well-meaning, but my question is, what is this, the same personal reaction of the client who's been discussing all this for a long time? And I think, is that before the movement of the client is in the sphere of a wheel, through something like pages or something, and growing the world of human substances or whatever, growing the way the chain is fractured all the time? Well, a lot of the insects, I mean, sort of seem to be the same thing. Just the student behavior, with the substance, and I don't want to take any of the reaction of the wheel, but I'm just wondering what the insects are. Yeah, so the whole thing is, a lot of people, when we associate with flies, we do think of them being disgusting, in comparison to the other insects. And one of the reasons is that a lot of flies are very amphiphylic. So they will hang around with us. And so therefore anything, our waste, our dirt, our food, these flies will be attracted to it. And these have co-evolved alongside us. The same with a lot of mosquitoes and things like that. And it's a shame, because you are only talking of hundreds of species, when there's hundreds of thousands of species out there. So in the UK, there's over 7,000 species of fly, but there's only 20 that are very, very closely associated with us. And it's a shame as well, because in our garden, there's another 20 that we desperately need. So we have for many years concentrated just on the negatives. If you think about butterflies and moths, they're larvae of vicious caterpillars, eating our crops, eating everything. But everybody forgives a caterpillar when it becomes a butterfly. And these is, we do this, we've got this really quite negative bias. And I think at the mount time, we just dropped that. You know, it's one of the bias, it's just money. And this one thing, how do you do it as with what I'm trying to do with it? Yeah, I mean, why is it? I said that flies have a major vision, yet still flies keep caught up in spiders web. It does remind me of David Attenborough once doing some filming with bats, and they were talking about how bats are amazing with echolocation, and one flew straight into his head. They will, sometimes they will get sidewiped by something. Now, you've got to remember, they're flying in 3D, so they're having all these different things going on. And when they're flying, they're not just seeing, they're smelling, all of this.  We talk, you know, everyone goes, why do they always fly into windows? Now, the thing about glass, it will stop, is it UVA and UVB coming through? And flies use that to orientate. So depending on where they are, in different situations, they will just get, you know, and maybe they were just flew up too fast and just went into it. So yeah, there are some actual flies that have learned to live on spider webs, though. So even those environments, some flies have adapted to it, it's quite fun. And then you, in the second part, where you say, oh, glass, this is how you do it, it's quite clear, it's a different situation. And the second part is, is not something that goes online, it's a kind of operation, perhaps, where we should be able to find the glass. Yeah, actually, somebody else has asked online. There's an online question also on climate change and flies. Now, number one, we don't know enough about flies. So we're the most described country in the world. We know there's 7,000 plus fly species here, but what we can tell you about their love, even most of their species, is nothing. Okay, so they've looked at long-term changes when it comes to lots of birds, lots of vertebrates, fish, and as we get smaller and smaller, it gets less and less. And most of the insect populations they've looked at has been ground beetles, butterflies, and some bees. So flies have been ignored. Recently, thanks to the use of UK recording schemes, such as the hoverfly recording scheme, they've been looking at long-term data shifts, and there's been these tracks set around the UK called the Rothamsted tracks, and they're looking at the aeroplankton. So we're beginning to get data. Now what they're showing us, which is actually pretty obvious, is rare species becoming rarer because they are the ones whose habitat is quite unique. They've evolved to be in those habitats. They're the ones suffering. So with a lot of the very rare hoverflies struggling badly now. But a lot of the common flies, like those hoverflies that are migrating across Europe, they are doing well because they are able to still carry on to find nectar to do this. And the nice thing in some ways about flies, and Harrison says bees, is that the larvae feed on a completely different thing to the adults. So whereas bees, the larvae will be feeding on the pollen and the nectar, which we impacted, say by pesticides as well, and all these, you won't get the same difference in the flies in a lot of the cases. So climate change is having an impact. We're seeing species kind of moving, but the true extent of what climate change is gonna do, we don't know. And I have a nasty feeling things may happen too quickly for us to actually realize what's going on. Okay, one final question from, in the hall. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. So the question is that the UK is, has always been slightly different than the mainland Europe.  If you look at our ecosystems in the UK, we are way more land is turned over to that, really intensive farming. So yes, we are being known for being bad to our insect populations for a long time. And it's something we really have to readdress. So land use change is the biggest problem with insects. So climate change is about fourth, fifth at the moment. Land use change of pesticides, number one and number two. So those two factors have to be addressed. Okay, we'll now take some questions from the virtual audience. And now I'll read these out to Erica. One member says, I photographed the wings of flies for fun. And I've seen that they've covered in tiny hairs. How does this affect the aerodynamic properties of the wing and what are those hairs for? Ooh, you're gonna have to ask a physicist about that. We don't know, there's a lot of hairs, but not all of them have hairs. Some have scales, some don't have scales, some patterns of scales really change. But they are not just for flying. So they've manipulated the genes of Drosophila, they do it everything. And they've got rid of the sensors at the top of the wing. And this means although they can fly, they can't smell because they use their wings to smell as well. So this enables them to go up to fruits and things like that to determine what's going on. So when they've turned the genes off at the base top of their wings, these things are flying blind now. So yes, we know that they're not just for flying. Okay, there's a question about flies in the marine environment, which are not so common as they are in the terrestrial environment. And yet you did say they could live in salt water. So why? There's a fly I showed you tonight that lived in marine waters. So flies never evolved in the sea. Insects didn't evolve in the sea, they didn't come from the sea, they've gone back to it in certain environments. So we now know that fly insects basically have come out of crustacea. So the crustacea stayed in, a few came on land and the rest of the insects on land developed and went woo-hoo, a brilliant environment.  Okay, there's another question about fruit flies that have a pheromone along with their eggs to attract other females to lay on the same fruit. Does that attract only females and of their own species or might other species say be attracted to it and eat the eggs or whatever? Well, yes. I mean, that's the whole thing, develop chemical and it will be manipulated by everything. We are trying to mimic those chemicals now to use for integrated pest management. So we know that that chemical is meant to be species specific, but other species have recognized it and they will come along on a date. We want to use it to actually tell other flies that this fruit is not good. So everyone is looking at these chemicals in a slightly different way, but they are meant to be species specific. Right, another question. Are there any flies which are builders in the same way as the wasps and bees? Are there any that build structures? Oh, I've never been asked that question. Are they really the failures then? No, no. Some of them will create amazing cases for their larvae. So some of them make beautiful little cases out of larvae and structures like that, but not many of them because they're not social in the same way. So that's where you get all these big mess. There are some beginnings of use sociality. So there's a New Zealand backfly where they live together in a roost, but it's basically in back poop. No, it's not exactly like romantic, but the older males will guard all of the nest and they would zzz at things coming in. I don't know how that's meant to work as an antipodation, but that's the closest they kind of get to use sociality. So they're not builders. Some of them will create amazing webs and do things like that, but not the buildings. A question about the fly brain. How smart are they? How smart is a human? So we've mapped the brain now as I think it's 100,000 neurons and they're now beginning to look at all the neurological pathways. It's not my area of expertise, unsurprisingly, but they are beginning to realize that they are doing, they're storing a lot more memories than we thought they were and they're adapting a lot more. If you traumatize a larvae in a certain way, it will remember when it's an adult, because this is a horrible experiment. Don't do this, everyone, it's horrible. But they are looking at all the way they do this and how they can communicate. And so obviously we want to know whether they have a conscious, whether they get upset about things and I don't think that's ever gonna be the case, but we are now realizing there's a lot more going on than we initially thought there was. Okay, question about flies walking on the ceiling. Yeah, how do you do it? How do flies do it? Well, they're amazing. So on their feet, they've got claws, they've got hairs and they can release a substance that enables them to stick. Now landing on the ceiling is not the hard thing. Pulling off from the ceiling is the hard thing. Okay? I don't think I could walk on the ceiling. And they do it in an amazing way. Actually, if you look at their gates, it completely changes when we're walking upside down. Honestly, go look at flies on ceilings. Hours of fun, especially when you're in a pub and everyone's like, what are you doing? Slicking the fly.   So we are looking at this because we're trying to develop robots that could do that. So everyone talks about the geckos and things like that, but you've got these things flying around your living room that are brilliant at doing it. I, my Who's the Pest Radio 4 series, they gave me these like suction gloves to act like an insect. The dangled off the ceiling, which I did for a couple of seconds before my weight just went to both. But it was quite extraordinary feeling how an insect might feel doing that. Okay. A question I wanted to ask you about, it was a question earlier about why do people, blind flies, disgusting? Obviously you don't, but also people, even entomologists sometimes are rather to me insensitive about the way in which they will trap flies, trapping them on sticky flies. I don't like that. And I just wondered what you thought about that. Well, I think it's inhumane because you are starving an animal to death. And I think if you use the word animal instead of fly, people suddenly look at it differently because it is an animal and it is a nasty way of doing it. So it's interesting because obviously I think around killing a lot of flies. It's my job. But we've actually done a lot of ethics involved in studying, which is the nicest way to kill them, which is a terrible conversation I admit. But because that sort of thing is, I just wish it banned, it's awful. You see there's adverts where you could just go around zapping and spraying all of this. And it really doesn't make us understand what is going on. So I teach people how to catch flies. If you want to catch a fly and you want to swap it, actually just go really slowly because it can't actually perceive the movement. So you can do that. It's like if it's bothering you, just gently catch it and let it go out. But just take time instead and look at it because you've got a wild animal flying around your living room. Which I think if we change our perspective for how we look at these animals, it'll be so much better for us in the long run. And the fact that many people feel flies carry diseases? Humans carry diseases. We are walking pain. We can see this at the moment, the fact that we're all wearing masks.  I'm still alive. Yeah. You haven't been killed by a fly. They are very good transmitters. I'm not going to disagree. But there's many things that we can do to prevent this. Many obvious easy mechanical ways of breaking that. So if we just, and in the UK, we're fine.  Maybe cover up your food. Maybe shut that window.   Okay. I think that's the end of the questions, at least the ones that I can see. So first of all, I'd like to apologize to the virtual audience. There was obviously a problem with the viewing of the speaker. It didn't transmit properly. I'm sorry about that. We'll try to make sure that doesn't happen in the next hybrid lecture. I'd just like to end by thanking Erica very much. Thanking also the audience who've come along. I know we weren't allowed to have very many, but thank you to the audience. But any special thanks to Erica. I hope she's changed your view of slides a bit that you might be interested in their diversity, which is what she's talked to us about. The fact that there are so many potential inventions that we might make on the back of what flies can do. We've got a lot to learn from flies. We've got a lot to learn from many animals. I hope you might think twice before you swat flies in future. And maybe you'll spend your evenings watching them walk across through a ceiling instead. So thank you very much, Erica and I'd like the audience to thank you. Thank you.


Moo Cat by Russell Gins, illustrated by Steve Mac. Red Cat, Blue Cat, Green Cat, Moo Cat. Brown Dog, Blue Dog, Yellow Dog, Moo Dog. Pink Bunny, Blue Bunny, Green Bunny, Moo Bunny. Orange Pig, Blue Pig, Red Pig, Moo Pig. White Duck, Blue Duck, Green Duck, Moo Duck. Purple Cow, Blue Cow, Pink Cow, Moo Cow, True Cow.


Welcome to Sheboyton County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Tom Wagner and as you know every month we strive to bring a different department or some key programs and services to talk about what good is happening in Sheboyton County and some of the very good people involved and today we are so pleased to have our Transportation Director with us Mr. Greg Chanel. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Greg has it been 10 years or close now? It'll be 10 in October. 10 years in October. 10 productive years. A lot going on in the transportation department and that's what we're going to focus on is a little high end overview. You may have read in the paper that there are some key initiatives underway with our transportation department or system and let's get right into it. Let's talk a little bit about the miles of roadway Greg. I think you shared with the county board just last week that we have 450 miles of county roads in Sheboyton County to take care of fifth largest amount of all 72 counties. That's correct. Talk a little bit about the roads and what's involved. Well there's a every other year on odd years we have to do a rating system. It's provided to us by the state of Wisconsin called the Spaser system and that's how we determine what that road needs whether what kind of surface if it's going to need a seal coat an overlay or a pulverizing pave. So as we stand today we need about 70 or 272 miles of paving that needs to get done on our county highway system whether it's an overlay or a pulverize or in pave that's where those numbers are. The rating system goes from one to 10 one being the worst 10 being the highest and that's how we determine where we're going to go and what needs to what needs to work and what type of work. So I get that questions periodically you know how do you determine what roads to focus on how do you establish priorities and it's this system that's really you statewide is it not? That's correct. We have to every other year we have to submit that to the state so they know what types of conditions our roads are in so every municipality throughout the state of Wisconsin has to submit that every year. One being the worst 10 being the best. That's correct. So what would be the example of a one or two that's really in rough shape? Where you see a lot of the alligator cracking where the there's potholes and some of the materials lifted out where there's water standing after a rain in the wheel rutting those are things that we're going to start to look at if their shoulder is real narrow that's a that's an indicator for us as well we're not supporting asphalt that's there and a lot of times we start to lose that the the integrity of the shoulder of the road and because of those issues. And with 272 miles of roads that need resurfacing that's the number you just used right? That's correct. 272 miles out of 450 we can't do that all in one year how do you establish priorities on which ones you're going to address and how much we can do? Well it's it's one of those things where when we look at the the roads we look at ADTs the where's the traffic going what type of involvement is in that road are we supporting businesses are we supporting large agriculture is the road getting worse as it's staying in that kind of condition sometimes we need to invest in our newer roads before we invest in those really bad ones because we need to support what's there and before it goes the other way. So when we're looking at doing those types of criteria we look at drainage water is one of our worst enemies we'd like to keep that off the surface out of the ditches so it runs and gets away from our base so it doesn't get sucked into the base of the road and cause soft areas. So we'll look at that we'll look at safety conditions and then we'll look at the the average daily traffic ADT and if we're supporting that business that has a lot of trucking traffic and just to get their employees in and out in a safe manner that's how we'll establish some of that criteria. I imagine most of our viewers have been reading in the newspaper about the needs for maintaining our transportation system not only in the city of Sheboygan, Sheboygan County but statewide. If we have 450 miles of roads that means we need to service on average about 30 miles a year to keep up how much does it cost to resurface just one mile of road? An overlay that's about 24 inches wide. Two and a half inches thick is going to cost us approximately $120,000. Depends upon how close it is to the plant. 24 feet wide. 24 feet wide is the top that's the surface of it and then it's a two and a half inches thick. What we do is when we look at that road and we check out the the wheel running on it we're going with a half inch layer to level up the road to get the proper slope on it and then we'll cover that with the other remaining two inches so we're filling in the lower spots in order so that we have a full depth of pavement all the way across. So to recap if we have 450 miles of just county roads and we have to do on average about 30 miles a year to keep up and it costs just for the overlay $120,000 for each mile that means just to maintain our surfaces we're talking $3.6 million a year. Correct. Is that right? Yep. And I think as most people appreciate in addition to county roads we also have a number of bridges in the community. How many bridges is the county responsible for? We are responsible for in my job title we're responsible for all the bridges in Sheboygan county that are on the state and not in the state but on the county and local system which is 152 bridges 73 of those are owned by the county the other 79 are owned by the municipalities the townships villages and cities. So there's a lot of road work out there to take care of and as one of the largest counties with the fifth highest number of roads people can begin to appreciate why we have some serious financial concerns with how we're going to maintain this transportation system. Last question before I turn it over to Chairman Wagner if you don't keep up with this you know you painted a picture earlier well if we do this you know 30 miles a year just the overlay $120,000 per mile or $3.6 million for the 30 miles a year if we don't keep up with that and as you know in Sheboygan county and across the state because of limited resources we are falling behind what happens? The next the next course that we would take is where you got to pulverize that road so we bring in a big tiller if you will and we till up all the asphalt that's there and we get into the base bring it all together and then we find grade it make a fresh new base out of it and then we'll come with four and a half inches of new asphalt over the top of that that ultimately is going to cost us about $250,000 a mile in order to do that. Now we're starting out with a fresh brand new level of asphalt of four and a half inches thick but that's 400 or $250,000 a mile. So 120,000 for one mile of just a new service two and a half inches on that surface $250,000 for one mile if we have to pulverize and pave which isn't unusual right and then the third and final step that I know you've shared is that if we have to completely rebuild that same one mile of road because we've just pushed it off what's that going to cost taxpayers? $1.2 million to reconstruct fully reconstruct and that's all new base all new ditches all new drainage system new gravel and new asphalt is $1.2 million. Thanks for the open Greg. You're welcome. Thank you Adam. Welcome Greg. As you know the transportation department in the county is the third largest one following our public safety and health and human services you've got I believe about a $14 million budget. Could you give us a little overview on how that's allocated? Sure we a lot of our $14 million we have it we've allocated about $7 million of that is allocated towards wages and insurance that type of stuff benefits after that we have to take out all of our fuels our utility costs our building upgrades you name it the rest of it gets lumped in there as well as the paving so there's not that much to go around after you fix 600 pieces of equipment if they all need some work take care of utility utility bills fix your doors and do some of the potholes and patching and snow removal all that stuff is rolled into the the whole entire $14 million our revenue revenue then on the other side of that comes from we get about four and a half million dollars worth of tax levy annually that includes our equipment purchases we get $2.5 million in general transportation needs it's provided by the state we also incorporate about $1.2 million that comes from the townships that we the work we do for them another $2 million that comes from the state when we do their work as well so when we take care of their work for everything that we do on their work road whether it's materials trucking the labor those costs are all covered by those entities be it the towns or be it the state just one thing if you could just repeat it again I think that's a really a fairly large number how many pieces of equipment do we have in about 600 ranging from a weed eater to an asphalt right that's a lot of pieces of equipment obviously they're not all running at the same time because we don't have that many people working for the county correct but that's still a lot of pieces of equipment it is without question well thanks as you know the county is considering implementing the half a percent sales tax and 62 counties have done that already and we're going to address our transportation needs with this and could you give a recap about why you think that proposal is important well it's it opens up another door for some revenue and get some some work done that we've just all talked about it where we pave on average about 18 miles a year we're falling 12 miles short of our 30 miles that means we're deferring 12 miles annually that's getting added on and added on and added on as I indicated earlier 272 miles out of that 272 miles there's 130 of those miles that need to be pulverized and paved those are the ones that cost you $250,000 per mile there's also some reconstructions in there as well but there's a backlog of work that we need to take care of and this proposal is going to provide some some some help in order to get that done as well as take us off of the borrowing system so that that can also be in turn put to the taxpayers as far as relief and debt service and provide a little bit of payment for our municipalities who are hurting as well as far as their infrastructure and transportation needs go beyond our situation I've been reading recently how deferring some of these major projects I think they had one in Verona or whatever on the interstate there that they had estimated the DOT a four-year delay it increased the cost about 65 percent that seemed rather large but I know deferring these different things we don't have those kind of major projects but deferring the maintenance in the end cost the taxpayers money absolutely that's what drives us to get into the situation where we have to go into a complete reconstruction it's no different than if you look at your home you're going to make that investment if you're not going to annually do things to upgrade and protect your base and protect things around it protect the rough you're not going to protect the insides so if we don't protect the rest of our road and our base similar to your home it's going to cost you more money in the future to make those types of improvements and and maintenance needs to do thanks I know one of the other things in the half a percent sales tax proposals that would just be unique to Sheboyin County and the other 62 out of the 72 have the tax do this but we're looking to share some of this with the local municipalities the cities towns and villages and just wondering if the condition of local roads and bridges are part of the reason why we're doing that any thoughts you want to add on that absolutely in our department we we have a contract with 11 out of the 15 townships plus the state of Wisconsin we have a contract with them as well so we have our fingers and a lot of our fingers other than county business and a lot of the advice that is given to these townships and what they can do and try to save money and and and make their roads last a little bit longer comes from our department so we heard the other side of things and what their roads look like and the challenges that they're up against and and some of the things I've heard about listening to the from the heads of local government is you know we can handle our fire situations we can handle our fire trucks and we can handle the rest of the stuff that's coming to us one thing we can handle is the amount of transportation needs that we're all faced with right now and being a lot or being a little every municipality is going to be helped out by this and and every little bit counts and helps in this situation yeah I'm guessing in some instances some of those roads are carrying a lot bigger equipment and heavier equipment than they were probably originally designed to carry to in some instances absolutely some of this stuff was laid out back in the 1860s and years ago when they didn't have the materials that they currently produce they just rolled the top saw in and then they put some pavement over the top of it that's not going to support a 28,000 or 28,000 pound tractor anymore back in 1916 when roads were built tractors weighed 9,000 pounds so it's taking a lot and you know one thing we can't forget is that not every manufacturer or farm is on a state highway where it's built to handle load they still have to get there and they get there from the local road to the county trunk to the state road in order to move those products thanks and could you just talk about a little bit about that we're into the summer construction season and the orange barrel season without question some of the projects that you have going on this summer sure this is one of the first in the 10 years that I've been here that we don't have a large earth moving project however we do have some other projects we'll be doing a road extension on county trunk idon and adel working with the village and extending it out a little bit further one of our major paving projects is county trunk c starting at state highway 57 heading east to sunset road what we'll be doing there is milling off the asphalt that's there breaking the concrete that's underneath there because that was old state highway 23 and pulverizing or mobilizing that down to three inches and then we'll be putting the material back over to top and then paving that it's about a million dollar project that we'll be working on there it's about four miles of road we'll make a little wider make a little safer because there's a lots of traffic that goes between falls and and plinth and there's been some shoulder issues that we're trying to resolve with this paving project as well so we're going to handle some safety concerns at the intersection of m and c put some curbing radiuses in there fix the drainage so it's a larger project for us so we're going to focus our resources on that and we have a lot of state work some of you may have seen it on state highway 57 we did 22 miles of seal cody right off the beginning of june here that was a state project where we were able to do it for them and it turned out to be about a 450,000 hour project so we ran a very good year this year and we got a lot of municipal work to do as well and thanks adam thank you tom let me just set three captains and share a few facts directly with our viewers today because obviously bragg now is well aware of the proposal as his chairman wagner and former chairman roger distruity who's a strong advocate of it our transportation lady many others the fact is our transportation system is critical for economic development and supporting our quality of life in shingles that's a fact the fact is that over the last decade costs associated with maintaining our transportation system more than doubled the fact is that the state has imposed a one size fits all property tax cap on most units of government and therefore raising property taxes is not an option frankly even if it was an option most people see the property tax as one of the least desirable taxes they receive because that big old bills shows up right around the holidays we have to take care of our transportation system our parents and grandparents built these roads and bridges and i think we all have a responsibility to continue that investment and take care of them take care of them it's also a fact that if we don't if we continue to push this off kick this can down the road we are all going to pay far more because that 120 000 turns into 250 000 a mile versus 1.2 million a mile it is fiscally responsible to take care of our roads today then push this off and let the next generation of people worry about it so personally i really commend german wegener county board greg and others who have put this proposal together it is dedicated toward our transportation system a dedicated funding source 62 of 72 counties have already implemented a half person sales tax we're not reinventing the wheel and we're not doing it just because they have we're doing it because we have a need and it's time we will reduce our borrowing as a result of doing this and that will provide direct property tax relief so there are a number of things going on with this proposal including as we discussed a few minutes ago sharing some of the revenue with other local units of government to help them with their with their challenges so big initiative for the county board we're going to have a vote next month on this and again greg i want to compliment you and your team and the leadership that you put into this thank you uh in addition to this proposal to maintain our transportation system and this is where we'll end there's also discussion about a new transportation complex and some people have gotten these two a little confused and the fact is that the county has a five-year capital plan the county board has a five-year capital plan we've planned for this new transportation complex now for years we've purchased the property and one of the beauties of the proposal is we're going to be consolidating three facilities into one we're consolidating three facilities into one so it's a tremendous investment in new infrastructure a new building a new transportation complex to take care of all this equipment that you have to have to run a highway department but the plan was to bond for that to borrow for that as we generally do for major building projects the half person sales tax is not to be used for the new facility and again we're consolidating three facilities into one so with that said with that background talk a little bit about why this transportation complex is important and why the county board is pursuing this now well it's an opportunity we uh back in 2014 i believe we had we'd looked at the facilities at plymouth and elkhart lake and we looked at what kind of money we'd be needing to invest in the next 10 to 15 years and the number was starting to grow we were close to a million bucks or so between the two and as those conversations had taken off um we started to think back to a decade ago when the new transportation complex was was considered as well and it was in in the five-year capital plan and we talked about so we thought let's take our opportunity and get us all underneath one roof those three facilities and consolidate less than our footprint and have less buildings to take care of so that's what started the conversation and now today led to having 37 acres at the intersection of j in third and state highway 67 we are into design um we uh i guess years ago when when when the buildings were constructed back in 1947 in 1983 nobody really knew that we'd be plowing with a quad axle truck that measures 54 feet from front to back with a plow and a sander on it so our space is getting cramped our facilities are getting older and at this time it's a it's a wise time to invest and it's going to reduce our footprint and put some other valuable properties on the market i know we had an operational review of our transportation department a number of years ago and i think at that time we had seven highway sheds and we reduced it by one that's correct yeah correctly if i'm wrong i'm building this from memory so we've gone from seven to six and then in this situation now we would be reducing our footprint even further the main headquarters in shabuigan the old main department headquarters would uh we would be able to return that to the private sector put it back in tax role yes the facility implement and the facility in elkhart lake so again consolidating three facilities into one you just touched on the age of these facilities and could you walk through us through that again quick elkhart lake is was built in 1947 the first piece of it then there was a fire at one point and they they came back in 1995 or 93 i'm not exactly sure on the date and they put up another stand alone metal shed uh plymouth it stands on a almost an 80 acre parcel and it's built in 1983 it's got a couple salt sheds with it and square footage is about 28 000 square feet um our manatoir i'm sorry shabuigan facility is on 8.35 acres and it's right near the police station as well as the shabuigan clinic so very valuable properties it's located next to an office complex so i think there's a multiple things that could be utilized there all of these uh facilities what year was that 1954 54 1954 correct so they're all in in in pretty decent condition for the condition they're in and for the ages they are um but very marketable slots you know you can see the one implement from 23 so it's got a nice location and the elkhart lake is on state highway 67 so um i think the timing's right it would be great to get us all under there are going to gain some efficiencies by having just the the general communication between my staff instead of having everybody spread out over those three facilities it'd be our administration our shop all the overhead cranes all of that it's not just a garage the housing equipment that's that's the place where we're going to be putting everything together and fabricating things that we need to have in the field so i think it will be a great opportunity for us to communicate collaborate and gain some efficiencies as well travel time for our workforce to come back and forth to the city of shabuigan which may have made sense in 1954 but doesn't anymore correct and as you know and german wagner knows we already have a offer to purchase the property in elkhart lake and we have some interest in plymouth and i know we'll have interest in our facility in the city shabuigan because it's fine for development whether they continue with the building or add something new so anyway it's solidating from three facilities to one and uh there hasn't been a lot of public discussion about it because the press hasn't really covered that but from a standpoint of being in the plans and discussed by transportation committee and and board members it's been in the works for years correct we're now we're pretty far along uh as far as the the design goes we publicly we haven't put anything out yet because we really haven't put our support all into one um site location but we have reduced the square footage from the day one we started down to today and i think we're probably going to be in that 125 000 square foot range which is a huge huge building um but i think that we're going to put the nice the nicer look to it so it fits the landscape better and it doesn't just look like a big box out in the middle of the field and that's our challenge we've looked at other transportation facilities and they tend to look very what's precast it's precast cement and yeah they can't they don't look real pretty but we wanted to at least be sensitive to the neighborhood there and and i'm sure there'll be a decision made by the county board and what's the right answer there but uh major investment how long will the building like this last the community we're looking at 80 plus years that's what we should be getting out of it so the return on our investment should be there and it should be a facility that we can all be proud of as well as our our next generations can can utilize for a long long time well great overview gregg i just have so much respect for you and your staff thank you not only do you have a tremendous amount of responsibility taken care of our transportation system but you're doing it with less workforce than ever before when we had that operation review done a number of years ago we actually downsized our our highway department as well as many other departments through the course of the last 10 years at one point i think you had 117 117 today we're used to have 117 and now you're closer to 90 at 90 yeah i mean we're a leaner yet our level of responsibility has gotten greater and then i also wanted to uh come back full circle to tell them what you said about these escalating costs you've got an example that you read the other example that i think everyone in our community is aware of is highway 23 correct i mean this was enumerated decades ago budgeted some time ago has been held up due to a lawsuit and while this has all been going on people have been injured people have died we have key community leaders who have been saying we need to get this done and i think the cost has gone from what in the 40 millions to well over 100 million over this course of time it's remarkable what's happening for maintaining or improving our transportation system it is it's unless you have your own wings it's getting more costly it is you know we've been told even with the building project that you know the longer you put that off your talk anywhere between three and five percent a year just in just in material cost only that's not labor equipment and everything that's associated with getting that structure at that facility built so yeah it can add up in a very very fast time to millions of dollars the more and more delays we get okay just one quick that there are two quick things on highway 23 i used to travel that road a lot from plummet the fine lack and still do a little bit i just find it's a dangerous road unfortunately i've seen some accidents and certainly read about them and seen some near misses so i eventually will have to wait out the the judge will make his ruling and i'm hoping that will progress and also one of the other things i want to point out on the half a percent sales taxes at about 18 cents on the dollar will be paid on people coming outside of our county that we don't recoup at this point and i think there's some value in that to the county taxpayers yeah excellent point when all these folks are visiting the other 62 counties that have a half percent sales tax they're helping support their transportation infrastructure and law enforcement or whatever they may be applying it to them we're not capturing that so excellent point time also we have a lot to be proud of here that people can come and see and then check out so absolutely thank you for your leadership 10 years 10 years hard to believe how quickly the time is gone you should really go back to 10 years ago see oh i looked that yeah i know we both have a few of us right here thank you for your leadership thanks teamwork that you provide through your department a lot of good things happening and thank you for joining us today a lot of significant challenges going on in county government and at all levels of government particularly with transportation and there's some folks out there concerned with all the barrels up and navigating through our community right now i mean there's just a lot going on but a lot of good people and play helping make this community wonderful so thanks for joining us if you have any questions suggestions don't hesitate to contact any of us or your county board supervisor next month we're going to have wendy our finance director here and she's going to be talking about the budget process so until then thanks for joining us