Ecuador ← ChrisR

Leskia sp. (French Guiana & Ecuador)

Sep

2010

Leskia is a diverse and quite common genus. Determinations by Monty Wood.

Masiphya sp. (Ecuador)

Sep

2010

This is a pair of Masiphya sp. – mantid parasitoids:

Jurinella sp. (Costa Rica & Ecuador)

Sep

2010

Determination by myself & Monty Wood.

This Calodexia came from a batch of flies kindly sent to me by Eric Fisher. Monty says that Calodexia are cockroach parasitoids and their oviposition technique may explain the strange down-pointing ovipositor:

Argyrophylax sp. (Ecuador)

Sep

2010

Determination by Monty Wood:

Another fantastic parcel from Eric & Martin 3

Apr

2010

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 ...

Euglossine bees 2

Mar

2010

I have just been working through some euglossine bees that I obtained over the years from various sources – French Guiana (myself & Philip Soler) and Ecuador (Andrew Neild). With a little bit of keying (Mitchener’s “Bees of the World” & Lynn Kimsey’s key to the genus Exaerete) I discovered that they broke down to: ...

Xanthoepalpus bicolor (Nearctic) & Epalpus (Oxyepalpus) flavoscutellatus (Ecuador)

Jan

2010

This is an interesting “pair” of very similar-looking tachinids. One is Xanthoepalpus bicolor, a very distinctive species from the southern United States (this one is from Greenlee County, AZ). The other was collected in Ecuador (Napo, Rio Hollin, 1350m ASL) by Andrew Neild. There are no keys to this part of the world but after ...

Adejeania vexatrix (Nearctic) & look-alikes from Ecuador & Argentina 2

Jan

2010

Here is an absolute beauty that goes by the name of Adejeania vexatrix – note the extremely long palps protruding forwards and the long proboscis, in this specimen held under the body. The second specimen was taken in Ecuador (Napo, Rio Hollin, 1350m ASL) by Andrew Neild. This compares very favourably to specimens of Adejeania ...

Tachinid Recording News

Thelyconychia solivaga January 23, 2015
Recently I have been working on adding a new species to the British list to our key. Thelyconychia solivaga is a small tachinid that seems to live on fairly stony/rocky coastal sites and is very rare in the UK – in fact only 3 specimens have been found so far (by Laurence Clemons in Kent […]
The problem with Phryxe … January 20, 2015
The genus Phryxe contains a few common species (nemea, vulgaris & heraclei) and a few very rare ones (magnicornis & erythrostoma). The key pulls out nemea first by the wide gap between the facial-ridge bristles and the descending parafrontals – wider than the width of antenna-3 plus the mustardy/yellow frontal area. Splitting off heraclei has […]
Gonia face colour January 20, 2015
In the keys to Gonia one of the couplets asks you to consider the shininess of the face but this can be a confusing thing to judge when you only have one specimen. In this mini article I have taken photos of the 2 choices to make it clear. The first thing to do is […]
Linnaemya picta, tessellans & rossica confusion features November 27, 2014
For many years Linnaemya picta had been confused with rossica because early workers (e.g. Fonseca) hadn’t tried using the European keys. Since the ‘discovery’ of picta in Kent it has spread across southern England as far as Bedfordshire, Oxfordshire & Berkshire and so now we have another fairly common black-legged species to confuse with tessellans. […]
Siphona urbana or geniculata? September 9, 2013
In Andersen’s 1996 book “The Siphonini (Diptera: Tachinidae) or Europe” he made several changes to the names of Siphona spp., which have proved a bit confusing. The changes (and subsequent reversions) illustrate a few nice aspects of modern taxonomy and so I thought I would write a little piece on what happened. Every species is […]