ChrisR

Many years ago Professor Donald Quicke gave me some malaise trap samples from a project he was running in the Cameron Highlands of West Malaysia. The specimens have languished in boxes for ages but just recently I have started to work on them using Crosskey (1976). The key works fairly well but there are quite a few that fall through it for one reason of another so more work will have to be done.

Here are some photos of some of the specimens:

* Crosskey, R. W. (1976) “A Taxonomic Conspectus of the Tachinidae (Diptera) of the Oriental Region”

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This is the first clearly different but unidentifiable taxon to be split from the peruvian sample. The deep gena and plumose arista suggest that it might be a dexiine and further to this it has a very elongate proboscis and strong median facial ridge – bearing a string similarity to the palearctic genus Prosena. However, Prosena does not exist in the neotropics so this has perhaps evolved seperately but with similar morphology.

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