Brachyopa silviae
| Brachyopa silviae | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Brachyopa silviae | ||||||||||||
| Doczkal & Dziock , 2004 |
Brachyopa silviae is aEuropean hoverfly species that was newly described in 2004 and lives in forests.
features
Adults reach a body length of approx. 8 millimeters, the wing length is 7.7 to 8 millimeters. The thorax is black in color, but appears gray due to the very short, light hair, in which there are some dark, shiny spots in which the hair is missing. The metasternum and some areas around the wing joint are yellow, the legs except for the dark tarsi, and the tergites and sternites of the abdomen are orange.
The species can be distinguished from other representatives of the genus Brachyopa by the combination of the following features: The antenna bristle (Arista) is covered by hairs whose length is smaller than their diameter. The scutellum does not have a deep longitudinal pit and is gray throughout due to micro-hair. The skutum has two dark and shiny spots on the inner ends of the transverse seam, which are dark and shiny due to the lack of micro-hair. The third tergite of the abdomen is lightly haired throughout.
Males can be easily distinguished from females by the size of the complex eyes that touch on the forehead of the male.
Area
The distribution of the species, which was first described in 2004, is insufficiently known. The previous evidence comes from Germany, one also from Greece. The type locality is the village of Haueda in the Diemeltal (Northern Hesse). Other sites are the Saalberghau nature reserve in Saxony-Anhalt, the Hainich National Park in Thuringia, and the Rhine Valley near Dörscheid in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Biology and way of life
The finds so far come from old wood that is moist to the ground: beech forests , oak-hornbeam forests , hardwood forests . The larvae feed on bacteria and fungi in the mucus or sap flow on trunk injuries and sludge hollows of various tree species. The adults' flight time ranges from April to early May.
Little is otherwise known about the biology of the species. Almost all imaginal evidence comes from Malais traps . In Greece they were also found on the blossoms of the pear species Pyrus spinosa .
Systematics
The Holarctic genus Brachyopa is represented in Europe with 14 species. The species with a gray thorax and short-haired arista are grouped together in a species group that is presumably closely related. In addition to Brachyopa silviae , this includes four other European species. The closely related and very similar genus Hammerschmidtia may have to be synonymous with Brachyopa . The other species of the Milesiinae subfamily are also attached to wood as larvae.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Doczkal D. and Dziock F. (2004): Two new species of Brachyopa Meigen from Germany, with notes on B. grunewaldensis Kassebeer (Diptera, Syrphidae). Volucella 7: 35-60. PDF
- ↑ MCDSpeight & J.P. Marthou: StN Keys for the Identification of adult European Syrphidae (Diptera). A special issue of the StN Keys to commemorate the occasion of the 6th International Symposium on the Syrphidae, University of Glasgow, 2011. PDF
- ↑ MCDSpeight: Species Accounts of European Syrphidae (Diptera) 2013. Syrph the Net, the database of European Syrphidae, vol. 72, 316 pp., Dublin. PDF
- ↑ Frank Dziock: Hoverflies need sludge caves. online article at waldwissen.net
- ↑ New species discovered. Press release of March 30, 2005. UFZ Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research