ChrisR

It has been very ‘birdy’ in the last few days. Yesterday I went to a local lake with my girlfriend and we saw a really superb Red-crested Pochard – a possible released species but still quite unusual. Then today, while having our breakfast we saw 2 new garden species – a flock of 4 Redpoll on my bird feeders and a male Brambling in my Magnolia tree! Sadly my camera wasn’t handy to get some photos but hopefully they will be back in the next few days so I might update this post later

At long last I am very pleased to say that the OPAL cabinet project is finished! Yesterday I collected the final batch of drawers from Max at the NHM in London and slotted them into place – as in the photo   The observant amongst you will notice that I have only 36 drawers in the cabinets, not 40, but I have bought 4 extra drawers as ’spares’ for working on accessions outside the cabinet.

Many thanks again to everyone at OPAL, the NHM and the AES for helping make this aquisition go so smoothly. The cabinets are already proving to be incredibly useful and will revolutionize the way we work at the Tachinid Recording Scheme 

Whilst at the NHM last week Max Barclay kindly sorted me out with some new unit trays for the OPAL-funded cabinets. I have spent a few days transferring the collection over to the new trays and this is the result:

I’m sure you’ll agree, they look really professional and they fit much better than the old, mismatched ones. Many thanks to Max for working late and helping to find and sort-out all the boxes etc.

Hopefully I will be able to go back next week and pick up the remainder of the drawers to finish off the project completely.

Recently I had a few chances to go back to the NHM in London and work with the world Diptera collections – it was marvellous! I took along some of my larger & more spectacular specimens from North & South America and tried to identify them (with varying levels of success!). I also took lots of photos of the parts of the collection I have been working in, for future reference. Here are just some of the better ones:

Many thanks to Erica McAlister & Nigel Wyatt for hosting my visits

One of my favourite flies from my recent NHM visits is the amazingly marked Bibiomima handlirschi, a rare phasiine tachinid from Central & South America. This specimen was taken in the Panama Canal Zone in 1913.

This is an interesting “pair” of very similar-looking tachinids. One is Xanthoepalpus bicolor, a very distinctive species from the southern United States (this one is from Greenlee County, AZ). The other was collected in Ecuador (Napo, Rio Hollin, 1350m ASL) by Andrew Neild. There are no keys to this part of the world but after looking at the NHM collections in London it looks very similar to Oxyepalpus flavoscutellatus Bischef, a species recorded previously from Brazil. There are many similarities but the main difference that I could see were the arrangement of discal & marginal bristles on T3 & T4.

This is another interesting “pair” of tachinids – the first being Jurinella lutzi (caught New Mexico, USA) and the second is a specimen caught in Ecuador (Napo, rio Hollin, 1350m ASL) by Andrew Neild. The second specimen keys well to Jurinella in the Nearctic Manual and, although the thoracic colouration and the arrangement of median discals is different, I believe that it must at least be closely related to Jurinella.

This is a really intriguing little orange, rounded phasiine tachinid with very un-tachinid-like shaded wings, like a tephritid. A few species occur in North America.

This one keys rather awkwardly to Protodejeania echinata … the problems center around the first couplet in Curren’s 1947 key where the reader has to decide whether the upper calyptrae are “brownish” or “reddish or brownish yellow”. I hate couplets like this because all of those colours are gradients of the other and no clear way has been provided to make out where one finishes and the other starts.

Here is an absolute beauty that goes by the name of Adejeania vexatrix – note the extremely long palps protruding forwards and the long proboscis, in this specimen held under the body.

The second specimen was taken in Ecuador (Napo, Rio Hollin, 1350m ASL) by Andrew Neild. This compares very favourably to specimens of Adejeania verrugena Townsend in the NHM (London).

The third specimen was taken in Argentina (Salta Province, Huaypa, Huasi, E of Cachi) by S. Kayss & M. Ohl. The body & wing colouration is very different to the others but it shares some very significant major features and keys well to Adejeania in the Nearctic Manual. After comparing it to material in the NHM (London) I have concluded that it most resembles Eudejeania melenax.

Eudejeania melenax (male) from Argentina

Here is a nice specimen of Pararchytas decisa (male) – not the darkened wing bases and vein rm. I have yet to track down Norm Woodley’s revision* of this genus so the determination is tentative until I can see a description of all 3 species.

* Woodley, N.E. 1998. A revision of the genus Pararchytas Brauer and Bergenstamm (Diptera: Tachinidae). Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington 100: 409–420.

Here are a few nice-looking Tachina specimens from North America (actually Lake Prairie, Humboldt County, CA). I have tentatively identified them using Ravlin & Stehr (1984) and they come out as Tachina latianulum & T. algens, from the male genitalia.

Just been looking at a few North American tachinids and picked out some rather nice-looking Leschenaultia - a genus of quite large, spikey tachinids with a lovely dense bristle comb on the hind tibia. One came pre-identified by Dan Hansen, so I know it is probably correct, but the other 2 just keyed to Leschenaultia in the Manual of Nearctic Diptera, which has meant that I have had to delve into Brooks’ 1947 paper on the Leschenaultia.

Southern England had another blanket of snow last night – about 40cm in my area, which is the most snow I have seen since I was a child. Of course, the town was pretty much at a standstill and most people didn’t go in to work because our infrastructure just isn’t set up for this kind of weather.

After lunch I braved the conditions and went out for a walk to see what the neighbourhood looked like:

Here’s a few photos from this Christmas – a few of us having our Christmas dinner and then some photos of the sea taken at West Bexington and Cogden Beach:

Last night we had one of the heaviest snow storms in many years and I woke to about 15-20cm of snow blanketting everything. Several friends have said they took hours to drive home from work last night and it seems that many people had to abandon their cars on the main road, rather than try to get up the hills to my road. At lunch time I walked down to the local shops and took a few photos:

I have finally finished identifying and databasing the majority of Villu’s Estonian tachinids!   There were just short of 200 European tachinids and lots of interesting species that were new to me – some of which are shown below. I still have to work on the French Guianan material but I will probably just bring that into the main part of my French Guianan / neotropical morphotyping project – there isn’t any way to identify neotropical material in the conventional way.

Today I had the very great pleasure to open the latest parcel of interesting flies – this time from Martin Hauser, in California. Martin had sent a nice selection of North & South American tachinids along with 3 pantophthalmids. The tachinids are superb but I will post more about them later – today I concentrated on remounting and identifying the pantos, which had suffered a little in the Xmas post.

The identifications weren’t too difficult but the specimens were a bit greasy, which is a common problem with large-bodied insects and which can obscure valuable dusting features. Luckily the palpi and the ‘noses’ were intact and they provided some very useful secondary features. For instance, P.planiventris is a very dull and faintly marked species but it has a lovely pair of yellow, swollen-ended palps with pointed tips and a long ‘beak’ of a nose on the face. P.batesi also has a pointed ‘nose’ but luckily it has some quite distinct dark spots on the thorax. Lastly, P.argyropastus is a new species to me and has a quite distinctive protruding ‘nose’ with a rouded tip. Martin had showed me some lovely photos of a male in his collection that was almost entirely covered in silvery dusting. Sadly the new one is a female so it is much less well marked, with normal panto colours and some small silvery spots on the tergites.

This lovely 2cm long fly came from California, via Villu in Estonia   Paradejeania is a very distinctive genus with a single species – there are many large tachinids with strong abdomenal bristles but none with such a characteristic triangle on the tergites, made by the marginals and discals.