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Marta I. Saloña Bordas |
I started getting interested in insects as a biology student when I had to do the traditional collection for
Zoology and I began to observe the huge amount of different life-styles, adaptations and diversity of this group.
My first research was done on dragonflies as a Master's thesis (1982), recording the species
inhabiting northern Spain. Nothing fitted what was previously published for the Iberian Peninsula,
based on information from southern Spain, and I began to discover how different a geographical area
can be from its neighbour and the importance of collecting good information about the habitat where
a species is collected.
Then I got incorporated in a research group at my University in order to do my PhD (1988) on a group of mites (Cryptostigmata, Oribatida) and my surprise this time was discovering that not all the mites are awful predators of our blood and that most of them are basic in the soil balance of our forests. This was my PhD, where I found enough information to conclude the importance of the forests in the balance of our soils and in the economy of the people, something historically forgotten in Europe, where the loss of forests and the industrial pollution is conducing us to a continuous poorness of our productive soils. At that level (2000) I got involved in environmental ethics and became a member of the European Association of Global Bioethics (EAGB) writing more applied publications focused on environmental education both at a scientific and a divulgative level.
But as entomologist I’ve also been called upon to cooperate with some colleagues; the first was interested in knowing the feeding habits and prey selection of some bat species, at which moment I discovered that our bats do not eat so many moths as I thought but especially mosquitoes! And the huge amount of Diptera that can be found in a very restricted area. The 2nd colleague asked me for cooperation on something even more fascinating, if possible, which is the insects related to corpse decomposition, first and especially Diptera. At that moment I began to collect flies attracted to decomposing matter, where some Sarcophagidae use to throw their maggots, and that’s the reason I’m in this web page, with some news really interesting related to the distribution and life cycles of some Sarcophaga species of interest for forensic entomology, that seems to be my speciality for the next years.
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Content by M.I. Saloña Bordas.
Please send any comments about these pages to Thomas Pape.
Last updated: 30 June 2005.
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