ChrisR

This is a lovely little phasiine tachinid found across most of the neotropics and into the southern United States – note the colouration, the hatched-shaped antenna-3 and long, curved proboscis

See also my photos of Beskia from French Guiana.

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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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This is a strange phasiine tachinid with and extremely long proboscis and long antennae. The curl on this specimen’s antennae may have been caused by the drying process when it was taken out of alcohol – I only have one specimen of this taxon so I have nothing else to compare it with.

UPDATE (30/1/2010): I have obtained 2 more specimens that are pretty-much identical to this and after comparing them with the NHM world collection I have concluded that they are probably Beskia aelops, a widespread phasiine tachinid found from South America to the southern USA.

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