Zelia ← ChrisR

Some nice Venezuelan tachinids 2

Dec

2012

Just had time to look at a box of Venezuelan tachinids sent to me by my good friend Jose Manuel Ayala. There are plenty of complete unknowns but a few look like familiar friend: a beautifully marked Zelia sp. (#2 on the top row) & Cylindromyia sp, (#5 on the middle row).

Zelia sp. (French Guiana & Costa Rica)

Sep

2010

This is a huge genus containing many superficially dissimilar species. 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 ...

A new arrival from Peru!

Feb

2010

Today I received a very exciting parcel of peruvian tachinids from John Smit and Menno Reemer. The samples were taken during the last half of 2009 in the Sachavacayoc Centre, Tambopata river region. This is a very species-rich part of the world with a very interesting fauna to me. I will probably take another few ...

fg-taxon #3 (Zelia sp.)

Apr

2009

This is a more typical tachinid – a dexiine with plumose antennae and a conventionally proportioned body and colouration. EDIT (Monty Wood 26/9/2010): This is a group of Zelia sp. – a very large and diverse genus.

Zelia sp. (fg-taxon #2)

Apr

2009

This taxon looks very similar to taxon #1 but it is subtly different. It closely resembles a box of “Zelia sp. indet.” in the NHM, London:

Zelia sp. (fg-taxon #1)

Apr

2009

This taxon is a dexine tachinid with unusual markings on T3 and an elongate abdomen. It also has plumose antennae.

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 […]