ChrisR

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 a wonderful array of tachinid flies from Venezuela, Brazil, USA, Bolivia, Ecuador, South Korea and a few from Madagascar & Australia. I could recognize a few genera in my first glances but it will take a long time to actually identify these so I have started by photographing some of the more interesting ones for you to see

Many thanks to Eric & Martin for their wonderful specimens – they will give me months and months of fun working on them

EDIT: The Prosena sp. was identified by myself with reference to Crosskey’s “Conspectus of the Tachinidae of Australia” (1973). This is quite a large genus in Australia so I will try some comparissons with material at the NHM in the future. This species is at least different from P.siberita, in that it has a much smaller proboscis than that ubiquitous Palearctic species.

The Hermya sp. & Alophorophasia sp. were identified by myself using Crosskey’s “Taxonomic Conspectus of the Tachinidae (Diptera) of the Oriental Region” (1976).

EDIT (27.v.2010): Many thanks to Monty Wood for pointing out that my “Uramya” were actually Trichodura sp.

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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: Exaerete frontalis, E. smaragdina, Aglae coerulea, some Euglossa sp., some Eufriesea sp. & some Eulaema sp.:

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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 looking at the NHM collections in London it looks very similar to Oxyepalpus flavoscutellatus Bischef, a species recorded previously from Brazil. There are many similarities but the main difference that I could see were the arrangement of discal & marginal bristles on T3 & T4.

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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 verrugena Townsend in the NHM (London).

The third specimen was taken in Argentina (Salta Province, Huaypa, Huasi, E of Cachi) by S. Kayss & M. Ohl. The body & wing colouration is very different to the others but it shares some very significant major features and keys well to Adejeania in the Nearctic Manual. After comparing it to material in the NHM (London) I have concluded that it most resembles Eudejeania melenax.

Eudejeania melenax (male) from Argentina

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