ChrisR

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 a crazy-looking dexiine tachinid. This subfamily usually have quite elongate legs but this taxon takes it to extremes with hind legs that are actually twice as long as the rest of the body. The photo doesn’t show this very well but I decided to fold the legs up to protect them on this specimen.

UPDATE (30/1/2010): After looking through the NHM collections I have concluded that this is Cholomyia inaequipes, or a very closely related species. Here are some photos of some NHM specimens:

Cholomyia inaequipes

Cholomyia inaequipes

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