ChrisR

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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This is a little post just to show the range of antennal branching in different multifissicorn tachinids – apologies for the poor quality of the photos.

As you can see, Cryptocladocera spp. have huge branches on their antennae while both of the 2 new species have much shorter antennal branches, which seems closer to the description of Cerotachina. Personally, I would like to lump them all into Cryptocladocera but I need to do more research first.

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This little gem is another multifissicorn species with feathered antennae – similar to the other ‘featherface’ tachinids, like Borgmeiermyia and Cryptocladocera. However, after running this through Arnaud (1963) it keys out as Cerotachina but doesn’t conform to either of the 2 known species so I am considering this a new, as yet undescribed species.

In summary, this species keys to Cerotachina because it has no median discal bristles the branches on antennae-3 are short – much less than 1/3 the length of antenna-3. The 2 existing species (C.elegantula & C.albula) are described as having a black body and black femur with darkened tibiae but this species has a dark-brownish ground colour (especially on the pleurae) and wholly bright orange legs.

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This is a lovely specimen of Belvosia, donated by Villu Soon from specimens he collected in French Guiana.

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This is a really interesting group of species – all very similar in general body shape and with a curious ovipositor that appears to emerge vertically, under the abdomen.

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This is a real Phasia lookalike with it’s body shape and wing venation, but I have run it through the keys in Sun & Marshall and compared the venation and genitalia to the figures and I can’t see anything that comes close enough to convince me that it is a Phasia sp. – the bend in the median vein is too right-angled and the frons too wide for any of the known neotropical species.

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This one is unusual because the abdomen is tipped with a strange, shiny, flattened structure that resembles a squashed tube.

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A really unusual medium-sized tachinid with large curved-under genitalia. In addition to that it has widely separated T1+2 marginals, a projecting mouth edge, 2 katepisternals, quite short antennae & a small ‘Sturmia-spot’.

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I like to split the processing of Malaise trap samples into several distinct phases. The first phase is to empty the tubes of insects suspended in alcohol into individual tupperware trays and then work through them, splitting out the groups that I am interested in (mainly tachinids) and that I collect for friends.

The tachinids are then dried out slightly on filter-papers and then micropinned into flat, plastic boxes (as on the right of the photo). During this process I hook-out the male genitalia so that they can be viewed easily later. The other sorted samples that will be sent to other entomologists are stored in alcohol-tight tubes – one tube per date/collector/family.

Once the tachinids have dried out fully the next phase is to move the flies onto foam stages, give them a data label and pin them into working drawers. These drawers are work spaces where I can start looking for taxa that I have already described and pull out new taxa.

In this batch I have 273 tachinids plus about another 50 Hymenoptera and other Diptera families. I haven’t seen anything stunning this time but there are a lot of interesting taxa … lots of Borgmeiermyia cf. brasiliana etc.

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This is my current favourite from Villu’s recent sample of tachinids from French Guiana – it looks very closely related to one I found in my last batch – see here.

This identification was made by comparing the specimen to material in the NHM in London – many thanks to Erica McAlister & Kim Goodyear for giving me access to the collections.

EDIT (21/2/2010): The genus Cordyligaster hasn’t been revised since Guimaraes wrote a key to the neotropical species and published a new species (C.townsendi) in 1971* and there appears to be a bit of synonomy in the genus. The NHM collection contains seperate sections for C.fuscipennis and C.petiolata but, as far as I can see, fuscipennis is just a synonym of petiolata now and the 2 “species” look remarkably similar in the collection.

I now have specimens from Peru that also conform to Guimaraes’ idea of C.petiolata.

* Guimaraes, J. H. 1971. Notes on the genus Cordyligaster Macquart, with the description of a new species from Brazil (Diptera, Tachinidae). Pap. avuls. Zool. 25: 99-103.

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I have just taken delivery of a really interesting sample of tachinids from Villu Soon at the Museum of Zoology, Tartu, Estonia. It is a mixture of 3/4 Estonian and 1/3 French Guianan samples so it is doubly exciting for me – things I can actually identify and add to my Palearctic collection PLUS more interesting morphotypes to add to my ongoing Neotropical project!

I have never seen any tachinids from Estonia but I am pretty confident that I can identify all of them – the Central European key should cover the area and I am sure I will be able to feed-back a good list of names to Villu.

The French Guianan material is interesting because these flies were hand netted, whereas my previous samples were all malaise trapped, so there are different species … with an emphasis on larger species too.

I will add photos of both samples here as I work through them – but, as with all pinned specimens that I receive, they have gone for a 2-week holiday in the freezer to elliminate the risk of pests

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This is a strange little tachinid with a fluffy thorax (the hair has been matted by alcohol in the photos) similar to Pollenia (Calliphoridae). It also has extremely large Carcelia-like eyes and narrow gena. The proboscis is also quite long and looks like it might project slightly in front of the mouth edge if it could be located in its normal resting position.

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This is a bit of an oddity and might actually be a rhinophorid – it has a fairly complete subscutellum; diverging calyptrae and a small, roundish head. But it’s hard to guess what neotropical rhinophorids look like.

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This nice little tachinid looks very like a Tachininae – similar to fg-taxon #20 but with more black on the abdomen.

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This is an interesting little taxon shaped a little like a queen wood ant, with a very bulbous abdomen. The basic colour is glossy black with quite a dense layer of hairs on the abdomen. The head is quite rounded – especially at the back, with long antennae and a yellow arista.

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This is another really lovely tachinid of medium size but with everything very rounded. The head is similar to some of the Goniini and even the posterior segments of the abdomen are rounded and whitened.

UPDATE (30/1/2010): After comparing with the material at the NHM in London I think this is a species of Belvosia – possibly B. weidemanni?

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This spectacular fly looks very similar in style to European Mintho spp., but it is in fact a dexiine from the tribe Sophiini. The body length is 13mm, which makes is quite a large species, the calyptrae are very small and the palps are covered with small bristlets. It seems fairly obvious that it is attempting to mimic flying ants, with the narrow waist and shaded wing costa.

This identification was made by comparing the specimen to material in the NHM in London – many thanks to Erica McAlister & Kim Goodyear for giving me access to the collections.

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