Hover fly - Criorhina aurea

Moved

… Martin Hauser, 1 October, 2014 - 9:28pm

Criorhina grandis

Hi Martin. So I went back to my old Criorhina project. I had dropped it because it was a difficult project for a beginner as bumble bee mimics can be horrendously variable. I took another stab at it with the experience I've gained and I had a lot more success. This is Criorhina grandis which is the same as C. aurea. They were both described in the same paper.

… Kevin Moran, 5 October, 2014 - 3:14pm

Very interesting... great res

Very interesting... great results... I will just leave the specimen under aurea before it just jumps back and forth...

… Martin Hauser, 5 October, 2014 - 3:30pm

Yes. C. latipilosa, C. quadri

Yes. C. latipilosa, C. quadriboscis and C. mystacae all need to be synonymized as well. C. mystaceae is the female form of C. nigriventris. The female of this species has a different shaped face and possesses a mystax while the male does not.

I got suspicious when I had 25 mystaceae females and not one male haha! And C. nigriventris was always collected alongside it as well.

… Kevin Moran, 5 October, 2014 - 3:32pm

Criorhina nr. aurea

A nice find! The Criorhina this specimen represents has quite the mystery surrounding it. It either is a color morph of Criorhina aurea or it is an undescribed species close to that species. We have two of these in the NMNH and I was able to compare the male genitalia of both morphs. The genitalia was basically identical between this morph and the regular aurea. A counterexample to the idea of lumping these morphs together can be seen in the paper on Sericomyia by Skevington and Thompson (2012) which found a complex with cryptic genitalia. DNA work may be necessary to pin the tail on this donkey.

Criorhina aurea has a yellow setose scutellum and thoracic dorsum. The abdomen is also yellow pilose except for tergite 4. On this morph the scutellum is black setose, the thoracic dorsum is black setose posteriorly and the abdomen is black setose except for tergite 5 which is yellow.

… Kevin Moran, 1 October, 2014 - 7:56pm

Moved

Moved from Syrphid Flies.

… Martin Hauser, 31 March, 2014 - 4:37pm

Moved

Moved from ID Request.

… Kelsey J.R.P. Byers, 30 March, 2014 - 6:39pm