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Hermetia concinna
Photo#820803
Copyright © 2013
Aaron Schusteff
Another Hermetia from the gathering -
Hermetia concinna
Florida Canyon Station, Santa Rita Experimental Range, Pima County, Arizona, USA
July 25, 2013
Brick-red abdomen visible here. gathering_2013
Images of this individual:
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Contributed by
Aaron Schusteff
on 9 August, 2013 - 1:25pm
Last updated 17 October, 2013 - 1:26pm
Moved
Moved from
Hermetia
.
…
v belov
, 17 October, 2013 - 1:26pm
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Additional Images
Hi Aaron,
I finally got my images of this fly up on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44150996@N06/9490043946/sizes/l/
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44150996@N06/9490046018/sizes/l/
. If either of these showcase important features for ID, I can post the image to bugguide as well.
…
Alice Abela
, 11 August, 2013 - 3:39pm
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Hi Alice :-)
I'm taking forever to post images too...and we got photos of so, so many great things!! Guess it's because I spend so much time studying the literature, etc...learning new and interesting things, and then editing guide pages to get the info onto BugGuide...and also writing up my characteristically long, involved commentaries on posts like
this one
.
Regarding the soldier fly here...both our shots show enough detail to key this to genus
Hermetia
in the Manual of Nearctic Diptera, namely:
1) Abdomen not elongate (with only 5 vs 7 or 8 visible tergites);
2) Scutellum without spines;
3) Crossvein m-cu absent, cell dm present;
4) Four veins arising from cell dm; vein M3 represented at least by fold in membrane;
5) Face not produced forward into an elongate cone;
6) Antenna longer than head; terminal flagellomere (Fig. 20) vane-like, flattened, longer than rest of flagellum but roughly equal to rest of the antenna.
Your larger images show good detail on the antennae...in the 1st shot I can count the flagellomeres (after the scape & pedicel) and verify that the paddle- or "vane"-like terminal one is the 8th, as it's supposed to be in
Hermetia
. I can also see obscure antennal grooves mentioned as secondary characters in the MND key, and the pilosity of the eyes. And your 1st shot shows more of the red abdomen (in particular, you can see it's somewhat truncate at the end...which isn't visible in my image).
And, of course, your shots show a higher overall level of photographic mastery then mine :-) Nevertheless, I think the wing venation came out pretty well in my
full-size version here
(click it again in your browser window after it loads).
I haven't gotten to the UC Berkeley library yet to look up:
James, M. T. (1935). The genus
Hermetia
in the United States (Diptera, Stratiomyidae). Bull. Brooklyn Ent. Soc. 30:165-170.
...so I don't know what characters might be diagnostic for species ID here. But always good to have your excellent images available.
Based on visual agreement with
current BG posts of
H. concinna
...which are all from the general vicinity of the Santa Rita Mnts...I'm betting that's what this is. But I'm in no rush to move them, I figure I can wait until Norm Woodley gets a chance to look at them, or I can get to UC Berkeley (which may be a while).
…
Aaron Schusteff
, 11 August, 2013 - 5:56pm
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Ran into original description...
...of
H. concinna
, see
this link
and Fig. 12 in
this accompanying Plate
.
The description fits our fly very well...until the last bit about "wings
yellow(!)
". I have to say though, that I'd have a heavy pocket if I had a penny for every time I've read old descriptions that use "yellow" for describing positively identified items before me that are clearly dark red. But those wings are deep smoky-fumose-blackish, not red...and definitely not yellow! (Although, maybe if you held them up and looked through them at the glaring Arizona sun, they may manifest a hint of fumosely-darkened yellow. :-)
Still, in spite of the yellow glitch, the rest of the description is very close, and with locale and all...I'm betting on
H. concinna
here.
…
Aaron Schusteff
, 11 August, 2013 - 10:51pm
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