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Photo#453604
Fly, 500mm sun shade - Apatolestes hinei

Fly, 500mm sun shade - Apatolestes hinei
Litte Basin, Upper Tan bark, Santa Cruz County, California, USA
September 5, 2010
Size: 13mm long
I have a photo of it next to the S in Sigma on the lens sunshade, and just compared sizes to determine 13 mm in length.

Images of this individual: tag all
Fly, 500mm sun shade - Apatolestes hinei Fly, 500mm sun shade - Apatolestes hinei

Moved
Moved from Apatolestes. I'm reasonable confident it's A. hinei, though I welcome dissenting opinions.

Moved
Moved from Horse Flies. This is exciting. Apatolestes is the largest N. American genus of horse flies we were missing in Bugguide. As Dr. Burger said, there are 12 spp. in CA, and a few more in AZ, TX, etc. All the species are rarely encountered. These shots might be the first showing a species of Apatolestes alive, or at least there are very few others.

I will try to run it through the Middlekauff & Lane key. If you have any anterior shots clearly showing its face, this will be helpful. Thanks very much for submitting this.

 
other views
I only have one other view, from the top, that shows a different angle of the top of it's head. It isn't perfectly sharp, and if a bit dark. I could do some PS on it, and only submit the head if you want this view too.

Moved
Moved from Flies.

Fly, 500mm sun shade
This horse fly is in the genus Apatolestes. There are a number of species from this part of California. There is a key published in 1980 by Middlekauff & Lane for the species occurring in California (there are 12).

 
looks like, smaller then a bread box
This looks like this fly to me, and the size is about right too, though it is on the opposite side of the country.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/172931/bgpage

The other flies this one resembles in Bugguide, either have striped eye's or are missing the space between the eyes.

 
yes, it might look like that
Members of Pangoniinae often have missing or modified frontal callus, and unstriped eyes. The fly you linked to, Microtabanus, is not closely related so probably has these characters through convergence. Microtabanus isn't known from the West, although you still have many interesting horse flies out there.

 
well
I just started paying attention to bugs this July, and it was August when I started paying attention to flies.
I'll be shooting more of them the upcoming years.

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