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Photo#1241108
Fly - Glabellula

Fly - Glabellula
Block Island, Washington County, Rhode Island, USA
June 18, 2016
Minute

Images of this individual: tag all
Fly - Glabellula Fly - Glabellula

Moved

Glabellula sp.
Genus ID confirmed from specimen, now a photo-voucher. Thanks Aaron.

Definitely Glabellula. Melander (1950) has a key to species and this doesn't key neatly to G. crassicornis unfortunately. The notum isn't as "polished" as I would expect, comparing to how the pleurae and legs are polished. Also he says the abdomen should be wholly black, and this specimen has clear yellow banding at the margins of the abdominal tergites, which is more like the coloration of a couple of the western species. This could just be undocumented variation. Greene's original description doesn't specifically mention the color of the abdomen. Also the shape of the small r1 cell is very narrowly rectangular, unlike the wing illustrations in Greene description & Manual of Nearctic Diptera.

So this may be better moved to genus level, I'm not sure. It could easily be attributed to intraspecific variation, an undescribed species or an introduction (e.g. the European G. arctica, but it doesn't quite look the same as images on the web).

I'll shoot Dr Evenhuis an email and see what he thinks.

EDIT:
Dr. Evenhuis says: "I’ve got a very old ms in prep revising the world species and there are about two dozen new species, many in the US (but mostly Florida or SW US – not in Rhode Island). This is probably another one to add to the growing list of new species. Best to just label it as Glabellula sp. for now. It is not crassicornis or arctica (both of which have shiny mesonotums)."

Moved
Moved from Micro Bee Flies.

Moved
Moved from Flies.

Glabellula?
Looks like Mythicomyiidae and as of c. 1980 we had only Glabellula in New England.

 
Cool!
I saved this one so we'll find out in the fall. I sure hope you're right because this would be a huge extension for BugGuide's distribution map.

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

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