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Photo#7002
Picture-winged Fly - Tritoxa incurva - female

Picture-winged Fly - Tritoxa incurva - Female
Orange County, North Carolina, USA
September 12, 2003
This fly was hanging about Goldenrod, etc. in an old field habitat. It was perched on a blade of grass when this photo was taken, and was probably ovipositing. (Thanks to Paul Beuk for his comments on this.)

I think it likely the brownish species seen here is T. incurva. T. flexa and T. incurva are apparently the widespread and common eastern species. T. flexa is very dark. This suggests the brownish species is something else, thus likely T. incurva. See guide page for genus Tritoxa for references.

This image is filed under T. incurva
by Duke University here

 
Yes indeed--so familiar
Yes, I was the one who identified it, at the plausible level, for Josh Rose, who wrote that web page while he was at Duke--it was on a field trip led by him. He was simply a bit more daring in assigning the species name. I don't believe he did any more research on it, than to read my comments on the image above. (However, my plausible ID seems so much more substantive having been repeated by others.)

Since we have quite a few photos of this genus, and they all do seem to fall into black and brown groups, I think we can go ahead and assign them to species based on that. I was hoping somebody would get to a museum and verify the coloration indicates the species thing, but it seems to be correct. I've even noticed more of the brown ones in my area (=incurva, presumably) and just a few of the black ones (=flexa, identified from other photos on the Internet), and this agrees with the abundance ratio in the NC State collection. So, what the heck, let's be daring and separate these out.

Female
It is definitely a female as you can see by the flattened and elongated tip of the abdomen. The ovipositor is extended and that can mean it is preparing to oviposit or that is has been ovipositing and is now cleaning the ovipositor.

Paul
http://www.diptera.info

 
Thanks--probably was ovipositing
OK, that was cool--I just edited that photo to make the note about ovipositing. In one of the earlier photos, I thought I had seen an ovipositor inserted into the blade of grass, but was not sure. I'll post that one and see what people think.

Patrick Coin
Durham, North Carolina

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