Erica McAlister is a senior curator of Diptera and Siphonaptera in the Life Sciences Department at the Natural History Museum, London, where she has worked for more than 15 years. As well as curating and researching flies and fleas both from the collections and in the field, much of her time is spent with outreach. Her latest popular science book, The Inside Out of Flies (Firefly Books, 2020), delves into the morphology and function of flies. Twitter: @flygirlNHM