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Photo#72117
Fly ? - Eumerus

Fly ? - Eumerus
Salt Lake City, N40°46.727'W111°52.629'ele4609', Salt Lake County, Utah, USA
August 15, 2006
Size: 6mm
Any ideas? Any chance it is a people biter?

Images of this individual: tag all
Fly ? - Eumerus Fly ? - Eumerus

Eumerus
Sorry not a Microdon, it is an introduced Eumerus species. There are 3 species introduced to the US and in Utah it could be E. tuberculatus or strigatus. But the females (and the one here is a female) are not identifiable by pictures. They do not sting at all, but they will damage some of your flowers (potentially).

 
Martin, many thanks...
for sharing your expertise. Could I impose and ask what the morphological differences might be, names imply that one has bumps and the other has streaks. Might be worth putting specimens under a scope. The inquery about biters came about because recently at this location "something" became active and becomes apparant when a small trickle of blood is noticed. A slice similar to tabanids, haven't noticed any suspects, yet. Guess I was trying to blame a new kid on the block. For the record, the 6mm excludes antenna and the wing beyond abdomen tip.

 
You are right, E tubrculatus
You are right, E tubrculatus has a small hump on the base of the hind femur, which is very hard to see in the female and better visible in the male. E strigatus has stripes, like most Eumerus species, so it is not a very distinctive name. The best way to tell them appart are the male genitalia and sternites, which are very different and very telling. The new name for tuberculatus is funeralis (sometimes somebody finds an older name, which has then priority). Check out the pics in the European Eumerus key:
http://home.hccnet.nl/mp.van.veen/KEYS/Eumerus/eume_key.html

 
I wondered
About those antenna. Those are the only two species of Eumerus I have listed for the eastern US.

 
Yes, there is one more specie
Yes, there is one more species from the West, E. narcissi, Smith 1928, described from California! And it is clear that it is not native to America, but so far nobody found it in Europe. Must be from Turkey or the Middel East originally.

Syrphid
Unless I am mistaken, this is another of the rare adult Microdon species. And this one has very expanded antennal segments. Surely it was larger than 6mm? I have only seen one adult in the wild in my life.

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