Scotiptera cf. venatoria (fg-taxon #7)

The fly was bought for a few francs from a butterfly collector in Cacao and it came without any data but with the assurance that it was collected locally. The specimen was badly greased and at first appeared black but after a bath in ethyl acetate the true colours were revealed. The photo doesn’t really do it justice but the species is large (about 14mm long) with a deep velvet-black ground colour with contrasting white/grey dusting.

This identification was made by comparing the specimen to material in the NHM in London – many thanks to Erica McAlister & Kim Goodyear for giving me access to the collections.

EDIT (Monty Wood 26/9/2010): This is definitely a Scotiptera sp. and possibly venatoria but normal S.venatoria have only 4 silver abdominal spots but mine has 6. We really need to compare mine to the type to be sure – there could be a few similar species.