ChrisR

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

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This is another small Belvosia-type tachinid from Peru – compare this with my photos of a similar taxon from French Guiana. This is much more heavily dusted than other, larger Belvosia spp. but the final tergite is white-dusted like the others.

EDIT (25/2/2010): Norm Woodley today got in touch and has said that these species with more dusting used to be placed in the genus Triachora but Monty Wood has recently synonymized it with Belvosia.

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A really rather nice species of Belvosia – a member of the Goniinae, which is shown clearly by the quite Gonia-shaped head 

The genus contains about 70 very similar species and was last revised by Aldrich in 1928*

* J.M. Aldrich. 1928. A revision of the American parasitic flies belonging to the genus Belvosia. Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum 73(2729): 1-45.

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Today I received a very exciting parcel of peruvian tachinids from John Smit and Menno Reemer. The samples were taken during the last half of 2009 in the Sachavacayoc Centre, Tambopata river region. This is a very species-rich part of the world with a very interesting fauna to me. I will probably take another few weeks to mount the specimens before accessioning them and trying to identify some.

It goes without saying that I am very grateful to John & Menno for their hard work!

EDIT (17/2/2010): So far I have seen lots of anonymous, black things but I have also seen:

• Beskia aelops (a fairly ubiquitous phasiine tachinid found right across the neotropics and into the southern states of North America)
• a few black Cordyligaster sp. (wasp-mimic tachinids with long bodies and very narrow waists)
• 2x Belvosia sp. (one of my favourite goniine tachinids – black with bright, white dusting on the apical tergites)
• lots of small Cholomyia sp. (a long-legged dexiine with a superficial similarity to Rhagio spp. in their body shape and coloration)
• a few even smaller Borgmeiermyia sp. (one of the small multifissicorn tachinids)
• and a very large Zelia sp. (a large, long dexiine with wide beige squares on the tergites)

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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

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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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