Erica is the Principal Curator for Diptera (Flies) and Siphonaptera (fleas), mostly working with the Lower Brachycera (Chunky flies that include the bee flies and the robber flies), Mycetophilidae (fungus gnats) and Culicidae (mosquitoes). She has carried out many research projects with mosquitoes both around the UK and abroad, recently working with DNA extraction of historic specimens.

Erica is currently working on Urban Nature projects, rewilding projects as well as general Biodiversity projects both in the UK and abroad – recently this has included Peru, Honduras, and Romania. She is working on describing many new species of Diptera from Dominica with both internal and external collaborators.

As well as her profession commitments she is very much involved in public engagement both within the museum and externally giving talks to both professional and amateur natural history organisations as well as in schools, at festivals and on the radio including narrating a Radio 4 series ‘Metamorphosis – How Insects Transformed Our World (2 series) and ‘Who’s the Pest?’. Erica has published popular science books -‘The secret life of Flies’ which won an award for zoological communication by the ZSL, ‘The Inside Out of Flies’, A Bugs World (Longlisted for the Wainright Prize for Children’s Writing on Nature and Conservation; Short listed for the Royal Society Childrens Book Award)

Erica is the Chair of the Dipterists Forum, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and Hon Fellow of the British Naturalists Society.

Find out why Erica works like a blue-arsed fly to make insects popular!