ChrisR

Today I had the very great pleasure to open the latest parcel of interesting flies – this time from Martin Hauser, in California. Martin had sent a nice selection of North & South American tachinids along with 3 pantophthalmids. The tachinids are superb but I will post more about them later – today I concentrated on remounting and identifying the pantos, which had suffered a little in the Xmas post.

The identifications weren’t too difficult but the specimens were a bit greasy, which is a common problem with large-bodied insects and which can obscure valuable dusting features. Luckily the palpi and the ‘noses’ were intact and they provided some very useful secondary features. For instance, P.planiventris is a very dull and faintly marked species but it has a lovely pair of yellow, swollen-ended palps with pointed tips and a long ‘beak’ of a nose on the face. P.batesi also has a pointed ‘nose’ but luckily it has some quite distinct dark spots on the thorax. Lastly, P.argyropastus is a new species to me and has a quite distinctive protruding ‘nose’ with a rouded tip. Martin had showed me some lovely photos of a male in his collection that was almost entirely covered in silvery dusting. Sadly the new one is a female so it is much less well marked, with normal panto colours and some small silvery spots on the tergites.

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Today Martin Hauser sent me some really interesting photos of pantophthalmids in his collection. They are reproduced here with his permission – when I have photos of all species I will probably create a dedicated Pantophthalmidae page

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These photos are of my holdings (9 specimens) in the family Pantophthalmidae, originating from French Guiana and obtained partly from Philippe Soler (Le Planeur Bleu museum, Cacao) and partly from Jean Cerda’s Malaise trap samples.

This neotropical family is related to the soldier flies (Stratiomyidae) but the pantophthalmids are renowned for being some of the largest flies in the neotropics and for having larvae that burrow into live wood. There are 2 genera and 20+ species but I have been advised that their taxonomy is a little confused and the group needs revision. Interestingly they seem very prone to infestations of phoretic mites, which usually sit on the anterior tergites – these can be seen on some of the photos as clusters of small white specks.

When I get a chance to identify them I will split this post into the different species. Many thanks to Martin Hauser for copying his literature for me.

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