ChrisR

Funny field-trip today – started badly when I discovered that the Wildlife Trust had put cows into the only field with a decent patch of hogweeds and totally trashed it. Needless destruction of nectar sources really annoys me – they could have put the cows into another field while the hogweeds were flowering but no … it probably didn’t even occur to them how valuable these plants are to insects! Then again, they didn’t have to cut all the hay meadows at the same time in July either … another massive nectar source wiped out … do Wildlife Trusts actually think about insects when they do their management work?! I am beginning to wonder.

Anyway I managed to catch a few flies (Exorista rustica group, poss Phryxe, poss Epicampocera etc.) on the only flowers that hadn’t been trampled or eaten then I went around the site looking for more flowers. In the end I went around the edge of the flowery meadow that they had cut in July and found some hogweeds and Hemp Agrimony growing the other side of the fence. These flowers must be the only nectar for miles so they were covered in butterflies (Silver-washed Fritillary, Red Admiral, Peacock, Meadow Brown, Ringlet, Gatekeeper, Chalk-hill Blue, Common Blue, Small Copper, Green-veined White) and a few nice flies (Tachina fera, Nowickia ferox, Phasia hemiptera male & female, Eurithia sp., poss Thelaira nigripes but not caught).

This huge concentration of insects on one small patch/row of plants shows just how vital it is to retain nectar sources and not cut hay meadows until the flowers are in seed. Also, put cattle in selected paddocks, starting with ones that have less flowers – don’t just let them into all areas so that they destroy valuable seasonal habitats.

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Today I went for a quick walk around Warburg nature reserve, near Henley-on-Thames. The main idea was to check for Villa cingulata (a rare speciality of the site) and to generally have a look for tachinids. Villa were seen in good numbers around the visitor’s center, The Range and Big Ashes ride – at least a dozen individuals seen either nectaring on parsnip or sunning at ground level.

Other species seen: lots of Silver-washed Fritillaries, Tachina fera (mainly very small individuals), Aplomya confinis, Nowickia ferox, a couple of Gasteruption jaculator (female), Chrysotoxum festivum, Chrysotoxum bicinctum, worker hornets, a few tachinids and lots of sarcophagids – lots of Cleg flies too!!

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The cloud too a long time to clear so I only got out to Moor Copse after 2pm. Still, the insects didn’t seem to matter and the hogweeds were in full flower so it turned out to be a good day.

Some highlights are: Nowickia ferox, Phasia hemiptera, Dinera grisescens, and a really amazing Silver-washed Fritillary form valesina.

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I braved clouds of Cleg flies at Moor Copse today to take some photos and catch some flies. Saw lots of Dinera grisescens and Phasia obesa/pusilla-group and some Exorista rustica-group, a single Nowickia ferox and a superb Stratiomys potamida. One of the nicest sights though were dozens of Silver-washed Fritillaries flying along the river bank and through the sunny rides – plus a Scarlet Tiger moth flying over 5-acre Field.

* weevil ID courtesy of Nigel Jones

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Recently I sent a parcel of difficult tachinids to Peter Tschorsnig and he returned them a few weeks ago, with his identifications. One really interesting result was that a tachinid sent to me by Jorge Almeida (caught Serra da Estrela, Portugal; VII.2009) that I had previously determined as E.picta was actually an example of a potential new species. At some time in the future I will send it back to Peter for inclusion in his revision of the genus – and allocation of a new name!

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While on a flying visit to the Moscow University Zoological Museum, Andrey Ozerov kindly let me take a number of their indet. tachinids on loan. The regions covered include the Caucasus, Urals and a few other areas – places which are seldom collected by workers living outside Russia, so it looked like it might yield some interesting species.

I have just started to go through them and there are definitely some interesting flies – I will post photos of them as an when I identify them. Take all identifications as very tentative because this is slightly outside the range of my keys and I will be sending the specimens to Theo Zeegers for confirmation.

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Just a few tachinids today – lots of ragged Zophomyia temula and a few Tachina fera but no sign of any Eurithia yet. One nice highlight though was finding a mating pair of Scarlet Tiger moths on Comfrey. There were also quite a lot of dead Empis tesellata – parasitized by the fungus Entomophaga.

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Today the weather has been sunny but not as hot as the previous 3 days so this lunchtime I popped down to Moor Copse to see what was flying. It wasn’t very busy but there were some nice tachinids – notably: a lot of Zophomyia temula flying in and out of the low vegetation; Thelaira nigripes; quite a few Tachina fera (first brood) flying around a hedge; a nice pimpline ichneumonid with a long ovipositor; plus a selection of sarcophagids that I will have to work on over the winter

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I have just received a really exciting batch of Diptera from Mont Itoupé, French Guiana. This batch comes courtesy of the Parc Amazonien de Guyane and was collected by Stéphane Brule and his colleagues at Société Entomologique Antilles-Guyane (S.E.A.G.). Stéphane also included a few samples that he collected in the northern regions, which come with less conditions of use*.

My first task has been to do a complete inventory of the different tubes and bottles – making a note of all the data so that I can work out how many data label sets I need to create. I will make up data labels (in PDF format) and distribute these to anyone who wants to work on a group.

So far I have only had a close look at 2 of the samples and there seem to be a lot of calliphorids (including many Messembrinellinae, which I am interested in). I have only found 1 tachinid so far, which is a little bit disappointing, but it was at least a genus that I can identify and I am sure there will be plenty more to come. However, there were 4 pantophthalmids in the sample from Réserve Naturelle des Nouragues, which will be a lot easier to work on.

* the Mont Itoupé samples were collected under a license that asked all people who work on the material to return 1 specimen of everything that is successfully identified. This isn’t really a problem because the sample is quite large and most people I have talked to are happy just to be able to work on such a remote and rarely collected region.

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Many years ago Professor Donald Quicke gave me some malaise trap samples from a project he was running in the Cameron Highlands of West Malaysia. The specimens have languished in boxes for ages but just recently I have started to work on them using Crosskey (1976). The key works fairly well but there are quite a few that fall through it for one reason of another so more work will have to be done.

Here are some photos of some of the specimens:

* Crosskey, R. W. (1976) “A Taxonomic Conspectus of the Tachinidae (Diptera) of the Oriental Region”

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Today my postman huffed & puffed his way up the driveway with another box of specimens from Eric Fisher & Martin Hauser. My parcel wasn’t really all that heavy but I think the postie liked to make a point … he was feeling over-worked trying to get parcels to everyone before Easter

Inside was a wonderful array of tachinid flies from Venezuela, Brazil, USA, Bolivia, Ecuador, South Korea and a few from Madagascar & Australia. I could recognize a few genera in my first glances but it will take a long time to actually identify these so I have started by photographing some of the more interesting ones for you to see

Many thanks to Eric & Martin for their wonderful specimens – they will give me months and months of fun working on them

EDIT: The Prosena sp. was identified by myself with reference to Crosskey’s “Conspectus of the Tachinidae of Australia” (1973). This is quite a large genus in Australia so I will try some comparissons with material at the NHM in the future. This species is at least different from P.siberita, in that it has a much smaller proboscis than that ubiquitous Palearctic species.

The Hermya sp. & Alophorophasia sp. were identified by myself using Crosskey’s “Taxonomic Conspectus of the Tachinidae (Diptera) of the Oriental Region” (1976).

EDIT (27.v.2010): Many thanks to Monty Wood for pointing out that my “Uramya” were actually Trichodura sp.

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The other night I was looking through an old box of insects and discovered 5 trays of mixed French Guianan insects from my trip there in 2000. Most are Hymenoptera but there are a few interesting Diptera and other orders so I have decided to mount them and see who would like them.

More photos will follow when I have sorted through the material. Many thanks to Eric Fisher for identifying the asilids and to Menno Reemer for identify the syrphids.

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These are a few asilids I picked up in French Guiana, collected along forest edges in clearings where they sun themselves. When compared to bees of the genus Eulaema it is clear that they are very strong mimics but it is unclear to me why they copy Eulaema and not one of the other, commoner bees. Perhaps because the colours of Eulaema are closer to the normal colour patterns (black, brown & yellow) of other asilids?

A Eulaema to compare them to:

Eulaema sp. (male)

(scale marks are 1mm apart in groups of 5mm)

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Here is a selection of bumblebees and carpenter bees that I collected in French Guiana in 2000 – plus 1 that I was given. With a little help from Mitchener’s “Bees of the World” and some prompting from David Notton at the NHM I have identified these to genus:

(scale marks are 1mm apart in groups of 5mm)

Many thanks to David for his help

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I have just been working through some euglossine bees that I obtained over the years from various sources – French Guiana (myself & Philip Soler) and Ecuador (Andrew Neild). With a little bit of keying (Mitchener’s “Bees of the World” & Lynn Kimsey’s key to the genus Exaerete) I discovered that they broke down to: Exaerete frontalis, E. smaragdina, Aglae coerulea, some Euglossa sp., some Eufriesea sp. & some Eulaema sp.:

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Yesterday Colin Vardy got in touch with me to ask if I was still interested to get my old French Guianan pompilids identified. Colin normally charges for his time but he had a batch of French Guianan to identify so offered to do mine at the same time. This offer was very generous of him so I have accepted and to prepare for meeting I decided to go through all of my specimens and sort them into their various groups. The results are shown below – they’re a bit jumbled and they need a lot more work but I will do a proper reorganization when I have more of them at least identified to genus.

(scale marks are 1mm apart in groups of 5mm)

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A little while ago Jorge sent me some specimens that he had collected in Portugal last year. Most were tachinids but I’d also requested any evanioids that he might find and he obliged with a lot of very small evaniids.

I have just had a chance to work on them and they break down into 2 species, both of which seem to be new to Portugal: Zeuxevania splendidula and Brachygaster minuta. Both species seem to be found across southern Europe so their discovery in Portugal isn’t surprising – they have probably been under recorded and overlooked until now.

Many thanks again for Jorge for his generous gift

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I received a really interesting parcel of tachinids a month ago from Jaakko Pohjoismäki – species that are uncommon/unknown here but that are common in Finland. Jaakko had let me know the names of most specimens but today I decided to work through them and just make sure that I could come to the same conclusions … having rarities is a good way to test your knowledge of the keys. I am very pleased to say that I passed the test

The list included: Leskia aurea, Dinera ferina, Blepharomyia pagana, Cyrtophleba vernalis, Phytomyptera minutissima, P.zonella, Diplostichus janitrix, Belida angelicae, Aplomya confinis, Bothria subalpina, Huebneria affinis, Drino galii, D.vicina, Nemorilla maculosa, Phasia aurulans, P.subcoleoptrata, Billaea triangulifera & Ramonda ringdahli.

Many thanks to Jaakko for his generous gift!

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This weekend I have been mainly sorting over another great batch of tachinids (plus a few interesting Hymenoptera) from Jorge Almeida. There was a mixture of 100+ malaise trapped insects plus a few pinned specialities, such as Cinochira atra, Carcelia tibialis, Clairvillia biguttata, Estheria picta, Peleteria cf. rubescens, Zeuxia zernyi etc.

I have done a preliminary run through the malaise trapped specimens and the species list so far is: Cylindromyia (auriceps, pilipes, pillosa, interrupta, intermedia, bicolor), Siphona sp., Peribaea tibialis (& possibly discicornis), some Gymnosoma sp., Cistogaster mesnili, Prosena siberita, Tachina magnicornis, Peleteria varia, Nemoraea pellucida, Medina luctuosa, Ethilla aemula, Leucostoma anthracinum, Clytiomyia sp. & rather a lot of evanoid Hymenoptera.

Many thanks to Jorge for all his hard work and generosity!

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This little phasiine is undoubtably a member of the Trichopodini, from the leaf-like bracts along the hind tibiae. This is very similar to some of the taxa from French Guiana – namely fg-taxon #8 #9 & #43.

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