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Photo#575145
ID for bee fly? - Aphoebantus mus - male

ID for bee fly? - Aphoebantus mus - Male
Claremont, Los Angeles County, California, USA
September 11, 2011
This very striking bee fly was spotted in coastal sage scrub at the Claremont Colleges' Robert J. Bernard Biological Field Station. This is a new one to me, and any information about its identity will be greatly appreciated.

Images of this individual: tag all
ID for bee fly? - Aphoebantus mus - male ID for bee fly? - Aphoebantus mus - male ID for bee fly? - Aphoebantus mus - male

Moved
Moved from Bee Flies as per Andy Calderwood's comment here.

Its an Aphoebantus -
and I think this is A. mus, a male. Osten Sacken described this as Triodites mus in 1877.
By the way, in Aphoebantus the vein R2+3 originates at an acute angle; right angle in Villini.

 
Why "mus"?
I wonder why Osten-Sacken used "mus" for the specific epithet? Did it remind him of a mouse? Can "mus" mean something else in Latin? I looked up the original 1877 description, and although he gives an explanation for the genus name Triodites, he gives no explanation for mus.

 
My guess is that Osten Sacken
thought of the looks of a mouse, Latin mus (pl. muris). I don't think it has another meaning. My etymological dictionary takes it all the way back to Sanskrit.

 
mus?
I have always assumed that the name derives from the furry look. Most Aphoebantus are short-haired and often have bands or other patches of scales of differing colors. Our fly is uniformly long, white-haired, like a mouse.

 
mouse-like looks -
Hi Andy, sounds like we're looking at the same 'mouse'.

 
Does look like it....
Hi Hartmut, it certainly does look like the photos of Aphoebantus mus. A. mus must not be very common, judging from the information and number of photos on BugGuide and elsewhere on the web. Although all the BugGuide images are from Arizona, I did find a reference to its occurence in California in this 1891 report by Coquillett on the 1891 California locust invasion. Apparently A. mus is a natural enemy of locusts, and Coquillett reports that C. V. Riley raised A. mus from larvae found feeding on locust eggs in Sierra Valley, CA.

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