There are no snakes in Alaska, so what’s that snakelike shape crossing the road? Few people would guess it’s actually thousands of fly larvae moving in a very peculiar pattern that gives the snakeworm gnat their common name. Dr. Thalles Pereira and his coauthors spent lots of time rearing, observing, and sharing their findings with their community in the process of describing this new species, and use citizen science data of this behavior in addition to morphological and molecular analyses in this paper. Listen in as Thalles brings us through the labs and back roads of Alaska to learn why gnats are so special! Thalles Pereira’s paper “Discovery of snakeworm gnats in Alaska: a new species of Sciara meigen (Diptera: Sciaridae) based on morphological, molecular, and citizen science data” is in volume 6 issue 2 of Integrative Systematics. It can be found here: https://doi.org/10.18476/2023.673937 A transcript of this episode can be found here: Thalles Pereira - Transcript New Species: Sciara serpens Episode image courtesy of Thalles Pereira via Integrative Systematics Stuttgart Contributions to Natural History Check out Thalles’ Researchgate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thalles-Pereira-2 Video of the snakeworm larval behavior: https://doi.org/10.7299/X7WM1DQ9 View these specimens and their observational records on Arctos: https://arctos.database.museum/search.cfm?guid_prefix=UAM%3AEnto%2CUAMObs%3AEnto&scientific_name=Sciara%20serpens&scientific_name_match_type=match&family=Sciaridae Springtail antifreeze protein paper: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60060-z Be sure to follow New Species on Twitter (@PodcastSpecies) and Instagram (@NewSpeciesPodcast) and like the podcast page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/NewSpeciesPodcast) Music in this podcast is "No More (Instrumental)," by HaTom (https://fanlink.to/HaTom) If you have questions or feedback about this podcast, please e-mail us at [email protected] If you would like to support this podcast, please consider doing so at https://www.patreon.com/NewSpeciesPod