ChrisR

This tiny little tachinid (2mm) has very unusual wings – very wide, like Phasia spp., with mottling around the SC vein, but it clearly isn’t a phasiine.

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This is a very small (3-4mm) tachinid with nothing particularly exceptional about it but it does have a very distinctive, long second arista segment, rather like Triarthria sp.

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This is a close relative of fg-taxon #98 with its rounded abdomen, large eyes and downward-pointing ovipositor.

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This is an interesting taxon with a very distinctive, dark patch of bristles on the underside of tergites 4 & 5 – rather like a broad Sturmia-spot.

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This is a fairly typical tachinid but has been extracted from the others by a similar trait for a flattened abdomen with very distinctive male genitalia, clearly visible underneath.

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This is an interesting and very prolific taxon that might, on the face of it, seem to be unexceptional. But it stands out from the others by having a very peculiar abdomen shape – laterally compressed at the apex with the male terminalia protruding from the most ventral part. The abdominal dusting colour & pattern is also quite distinctive.

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This taxon seems very prolific and quite consistent in its morphology too, though I am not assuming that it represents a single species. This taxon resembles some individuals of fg-taxon #22 but has a much longer proboscis.

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This is a really unusual tachinid with its mottled wings, shiny black body and long, curved piercing organ.

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This is a rather dubious tachinid – with its unbent median vein and very shallow subscutellum – but something about it reminds me of a tachinid. The plumose anyennae and deep gena might suggest Dexiinae. See also pe-taxon #29.

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Another strange Pollenia-type tachinid (see my photos of similar taxa from French Guiana).

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This is a really interesting group of species – all very similar in general body shape and with a curious ovipositor that appears to emerge vertically, under the abdomen.

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This is a real Phasia lookalike with it’s body shape and wing venation, but I have run it through the keys in Sun & Marshall and compared the venation and genitalia to the figures and I can’t see anything that comes close enough to convince me that it is a Phasia sp. – the bend in the median vein is too right-angled and the frons too wide for any of the known neotropical species.

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This one is unusual because the abdomen is tipped with a strange, shiny, flattened structure that resembles a squashed tube.

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This is a strange little tachinid with a fluffy thorax (the hair has been matted by alcohol in the photos) similar to Pollenia (Calliphoridae). It also has extremely large Carcelia-like eyes and narrow gena. The proboscis is also quite long and looks like it might project slightly in front of the mouth edge if it could be located in its normal resting position.

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This is a bit of an oddity and might actually be a rhinophorid – it has a fairly complete subscutellum; diverging calyptrae and a small, roundish head. But it’s hard to guess what neotropical rhinophorids look like.

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This is an interesting little taxon shaped a little like a queen wood ant, with a very bulbous abdomen. The basic colour is glossy black with quite a dense layer of hairs on the abdomen. The head is quite rounded – especially at the back, with long antennae and a yellow arista.

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I have just received the second, long awaited batch of flies from Jean Cerda in French Guiana. Six tubes of mixed familes, all collected between October 2008 and March 2009 in Jean’s Malaise trap.

At first glance they are not a lot of tachinids but there are some very interesting taxa that I haven’t seen before and I am sure I will find plenty more when I sort out the samples. There are also a LOT of tabanids, asilids and other larger familes – so all the people I pass specimens on to will be happy!

Interestingly, there are far less of the minute taxa that were in the previous (dry-season) sample. There are some small specimens but the majority are medium-sized.

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A large brown taxon with: plumose antennae; bare eyes; slightly protruding mouth edge; brown thorax and abdomen with ornge side patches; wing with rounded bend in median vein and an unusual costal shading pattern – orange in the proximal half; brown in the distal half; legs with an interesting colour pattern too – orange coxae & femur, black tibiae & orange tarsi. A strong subscutellum is present but is not very rounded.

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A small dark taxon with plumose arista and hairy eyes; facial ridges with varying numbers of bristles – females with much weaker bristles than males; pre-sutural area dusted but hardly any dusting post-suturally; eyes of male almost touching; bend of m closer to wing margin than rest of the post-angular vein; 3 scutellar pairs – apicals converging.

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(pictures to follow)

This is another small black & grey-dusted species but with a few quite distictive features: hairy arista; bare eyes; strong facial-ridge bristles between 2/5 and 1/2 of the way up from the vibrissae to the base of the antennae; ocellar triangle is a short/compressed isosceles triangle; small diverging apical scutellars; excavation only reaching half way to the margin of T1+2; an interesting grey dusting pattern – anterior third of T3-5 broken centrally by 3 faint longitudinal median lines. I have a male and female of this taxon.

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