Yesterday Malcolm Storey (bioimages.org.uk) brought over some new equipment he had just bought for photo-stacking, along with a ‘kit’ including a spare dSLR (3MP Nikon…
I have finally finished going through the tachinids that I caught last year and putting names to them. It wasn’t as hard as it might…
This is a lovely little taxon, with matt-black ground colour and bright pale-grey bands of dusting on the thorax and abdomen. It fails to achieve…
This keys to Hyphantrophaga sp. but it needs confirming. EDIT (6/01/2011): Monty has said that this genus is quite anonymous and difficult to split ……
These photos illustrate 3 species of Mystacella – a tachinid that, like Chrysoexorista, is a beautiful metallic green (sometimes across the whole body, but at…
This one keys out nicely to Austrophorocera but this determination will need confirming. The abdomen has a fascinating and highly distinctive tuft of orange hair…
A week ago I received a really nice parcel of tachinids from Jari Flinck in Finland and today I had time to sort over them…
Adrian Pont gave me this rather beautiful Costa Rican tachinid recently and it instantly reminded me of the Eucelatoria sp. that I had been working…
Yet another fly that keys to Atactosturmia … would be nice one day to know which of them really are Atactosturmia 😉
An interesting species that superficially looked similar to the Uramya from the same batch but this has bare eyes. EDIT (26/11/2010): Monty Wood says that…
The Polideini is becoming one of my favourite tribes because they have such unusual features. Most tachinids have a disc-like, hairy lappet covering the metathoracic…
This one keys quite confidently to Uramya sp. but it is a female so it lacks any tails that might confirm the determination. EDIT (26/11/2010):…
Pseudosiphona is a very common genus in the neotropics – in these photos you can see the small labellum (much shorter than in Siphona) and the…
The Surinamese batch of flies from Menno yielded quite a lot of male Cryptocladocera – here are just 2.
Acaulona & Xanthomelanopsis look very similar to Pennapoda spp. but without the leaf-like antero-dorsal bristles on the hind tibia. The only difficulty with these flies…
This is the first of a batch of flies sent to me by Menno Reemer and caught by him in Surinam in 2006. Copecrypta (and the…
Paul is a wildlife photographer and adventurer who contacted me a few months ago for tips on how to do serious entomology in the tropics…
Here is Dave’s latest version of the Pelecotheca (Cryptocladocera) male – looking even better. To see Dave’s other photos click here.
Last night I went through a tray of tachinids with a plumose arista and was amazed to see this fly with an incredibly long, straight…
This specimen keys quite easily to Polygaster – it has the anterior katepisternal bristle ventral to the pleural suture and it has the trapezoidal scutellum…