Small Headed Fly - Pterodontia misella

Good view of the tiny, strangely positioned antennae

The antennae...placed near the bottom of the head...might easily be mistaken for mouthparts by those who aren't familiar with these "unusually constructed" flies :-) But in Pterodontia the mouthparts are obsolete (i.e. virtually imperceptible in photos anywhere near this scale). Adults are short-lived and don't feed.

Note the short, stubby, 3rd antennal segment which is diagnostic in getting to species in Pterodontia:

… Aaron Schusteff, 26 April, 2015 - 12:03am

The chart lacks a representative for Pterodontia misella

...but does seem to share some common characteristics. Dang! You're tempting me to try to retrieve the specimen and try two more shots now!

… Arthur Scott Macmillan, 1 May, 2015 - 3:43pm

I just posted crops from two of my images of this same female

One of them shows the best view I got of the antennae (smaller than I'd like, but still useful).

The point of the collage in the thumbnail referred to in my comment above was to illustrate the two main types of flagellomere shape in Pterodontia:

1) roughly ovoid-spherical (as in species flavipes, misella, notomaculata and johnsoni); vs.
2) elongate-clavate (as in species vix and westwoodi)

I only included photo insets of westwoodi in that collage. The differences in shape among the ovoid-spherical species is presumably not that striking...but you never know! At any rate, it would be interesting to have another collage showing a side-by-side comparison of good antennal profile images for all six of the Pterondontia species! Perhaps someday? :-)

… Aaron Schusteff, 12 May, 2015 - 2:39pm

Moved

Moved from Small-headed Flies.

… Aaron Schusteff, 25 April, 2015 - 11:46pm