In the keys to Gonia one of the couplets asks you to consider the shininess of the face but this can be a confusing thing…
For many years Linnaemya picta had been confused with rossica because early workers (e.g. Fonseca) hadn’t tried using the European keys. Since the ‘discovery’ of picta…
In Andersen’s 1996 book “The Siphonini (Diptera: Tachinidae) or Europe” he made several changes to the names of Siphona spp., which have proved a bit…
I always find this species-pair really difficult to split – even when you flip out the male genitalia. The cerci are actually quite distinctive but…
Tachinid Times #26 has some very interesting articles on a few projects around the world to compile DNA phylogenies of tachinids. One such is by…
The prosternum can be quite a difficult feature to find on a tachinid – partly because many British workers, used to Belshaw’s key will never…
In my experience a lot of people have trouble with this genus because the traditional features used in keys are quite variable. In particular it…
These are some figures from Tschorsnig & Herting (1994), showing the sternite 6 of some female Eurithia spp.: A – Eurithia consobrina (furrow along entire…
Today Matt & I attended “Big Nature Day” at the Natural History Museum, in London – a day for wildlife organisations to show what they…
Belshaw’s 1993 handbook was a great improvement over the nomenclature used in van Emden but since then many of the names have changed. This is…