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Species Myopa clausa

Thick-headed Fly - Myopa clausa Thick-headed Fly - Myopa clausa thick-headed fly - Myopa clausa - male thick-headed fly - Myopa clausa - male thick-headed fly - Myopa clausa - male thick-headed fly - Myopa clausa thick-headed fly - Myopa clausa Myopa - Myopa clausa
Classification
Kingdom Animalia (Animals)
Phylum Arthropoda (Arthropods)
Subphylum Hexapoda (Hexapods)
Class Insecta (Insects)
Order Diptera (Flies)
No Taxon ("Acalyptratae")
Superfamily Sciomyzoidea
Family Conopidae (Thick-headed Flies)
Subfamily Myopinae
Genus Myopa
No Taxon (curticornis complex)
Species clausa (Myopa clausa)
Synonyms and other taxonomic changes
Myopa clausa Loew, 1887   (Original description)
Size
7-10 mm
Identification
Wings: Unmarked (i.e. no conspicuously darkened spots or patterning...can be hyaline to lightly but more or less uniformly infuscated); 1st posterior cell almost always closed at costal margin.
Abdomen: Shiny, with ground color reddish; and with distinct pollinose markings...typically including two lateral spots (each shaped like forward-pointing semi-circles) on tergites II and III. Abdominal hairs black, short, and sparse.
Head: Second antennal segment usually distinctly longer than the third; proboscis usually relatively long, the middle segment frequently nearly the length of the anterior femur.
Range
Southern Canada and United States (Maine to Georgia, West to Washington and California). (1)
Note: M. clausa is the only member of the "curticornis complex" that ranges east of the Rocky Mountains.
Remarks
A member of the "M. curticornis complex"...a group of 4 species (M. curticornis, M. clausa, M. perplexa and M. rubida) separated by characters that can grade into one another, sometimes making a species ID difficult or unfeasible. See the key (on pg. 99) and Table I (on pg. 102) in Camras(1)(1953) for identification details.
Internet References
MCZ type images for Myopa clausa.
Curated images: lateral; dorsal; ventral; and frontal ... from the Spencer Entomological Museum web site, Univ. of British Columbia.
Lateral and dorsal views from Conopidae of the World web site.
Works Cited
1.A Review of the Genus Myopa in North America (Diptera: Conopidae)
Camras, Sidney. 1953. The Wasmann Journal of Biology Vol. 11, No. 1 .