Myxexoristops blondeli

Recently I had the very great pleasure of keying out some odd little tachinids that had been reared from sawfly larvae by John Petyt [collected from Rowan, Sorbus aucuparia, 7th August 2021, from Tuttoes Wood, Laughton Forest, SE845010]. Now, anything reared from sawflies tends to be interesting because so few people rear them so I was very interested to see what they were. I knew the Exorista rustica group attack sawflies and odd-looking species like Elodia morio (below), but the basic appearance of these flies looked very confusing … very average … a bit like Meigenia mutabilis males, but not quite.

On keying them though I was struct by how they appeared to follow the “bristles in a roughly equilateral triangle” couplet btu it was quite fiddly to get them all to fit as the bristles were a bit variable. See below, where one bristle is missing and we must rely on a socket.

Anyway, once I had proved to myself that they really did go down that route they quickly came to Myxexoristops blondeli, which is an incredibly rare genus. In fact, in recent years, have only ever seen wrongly identified flies labelled “Myxexoristops“. There are very few correctly identified photos online so I thought I’d at least get these out there for everyone to see what the real thing looks like!