Some more Pantophthalmus from French Guiana

On Tuesday Erica McAlister lent me some pantophthalmids from a sample she had been sent by SEAG in French Guiana. Today I went through them identifying them to species and taking a few photos. The sample of 4 specimens was fairly typical for French Guiana – Pantophthalmus batesi (female), P.tabaninus (female) in normal colouration, P.tabaninus (female) dark form and P. vittatus (female).

* these photos are of specimens on loan courtesy of the British Museum (Natural History), London

2 Replies to “Some more Pantophthalmus from French Guiana”

  1. Great flies. I remember to have read a big article about Pantophthalmus from Brasil. Fantastic flies. I have never seen them in a collection.

  2. They do seem to be very uncommon in collections – the NHM in London, which has one of the best insect collections in the world, has just 3 drawers of pantophthalmids (some of which are huge specimens). They certainly come into malaise traps very sparingly too and I have only been given 27 (a couple of which are just on loan), mainly from French Guiana, comprising just 5 of the ~20 species.

    I would love to have more specimens/species (I beg & borrow any that I hear of!) and do some serious work to revise the main key … I don’t think there are new species but the key is a bit tricky to use because it is based so much on dusting patterns and lacks good secondary features in the key itself. It’s a good key but it could be improved. 🙂

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