ChrisR

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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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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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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This is a very unusual (dexiine?) tachinid with plumose aristae, deep gena, tiny calyptrae & a straight median vein. See also pe-taxon #10 – a very similar tachinid with a brown body colour.

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This is a small, black tachinid with plumose antennae, suggesting Dexiinae. These are photos of both the male and the female.

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This tiny little tachinid (2mm) has very unusual wings – very wide, like Phasia spp., with mottling around the SC vein, but it clearly isn’t a phasiine.

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This is a very small (3-4mm) tachinid with nothing particularly exceptional about it but it does have a very distinctive, long second arista segment, rather like Triarthria sp.

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This is the only Cryptocladocera in the peruvian sample and it looks very like the ones from French Guiana – fg-taxon #04.

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This is another tachinine tachinid with a slightly variable abdomenal patternation but there and many fundamental similarities between the 2 featured specimens – taking into consideration that one is male and the other is female. This taxon is very similar to fg-taxon #80.

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Another medium-sized tachinine tachinid – this time with a white-dusted head. The body is shiny, jet black, there are Peleteria-bristles and the tip of the abdomen is slightly fuscous.

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This is a lovely, tiny little tachinine tachinid – shiny, jet black all over with a yellow head and red eyes. Unusually for this subfamily it also has a petiole on the median vein. In fact the median vein has a completely remarkable shape.

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This is an amazing dexiine with a very Estheria-type face – small antennae, plumose arista, very deep gena, very chin-less profile and a very stretched-out ‘top lip’ with a second, higher pair of vibrissae. The bend in the median vein is quite acute and the part of m after the bend is very concave. There is no petiole but the bend in m has a long appendix.

These photos represent 3 specimens:

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This is a close relative of fg-taxon #98 with its rounded abdomen, large eyes and downward-pointing ovipositor.

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This taxon is clearly related to the other taxa with very prominent Sturmia-spots – especially fg-taxon #14

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This is an interesting taxon with a very distinctive, dark patch of bristles on the underside of tergites 4 & 5 – rather like a broad Sturmia-spot.

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