{"id":1157,"date":"2015-01-20T23:09:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T23:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tachinidae.org.uk\/blog\/?p=1157"},"modified":"2020-08-01T09:47:05","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T09:47:05","slug":"the-problem-with-phryxe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tachinidae.org.uk\/blog\/the-problem-with-phryxe\/","title":{"rendered":"The problem with Phryxe …"},"content":{"rendered":"

The genus Phryxe<\/em> contains a few common species (nemea<\/em>, vulgaris<\/em> & heraclei<\/em>) and a few very rare ones (magnicornis<\/em> & erythrostoma<\/em>). The key pulls out nemea<\/em> first by the wide gap between the facial-ridge bristles and the descending parafrontals – wider than the width of antenna-3 plus the mustardy\/yellow frontal area. Splitting off heraclei<\/em> has always been a matter of looking for extra bristles along the underside of costal wing section 2, which indicate heraclei<\/em> – without this would mean moving on to magnicornis<\/em> (split off using male genitalia), erythrostoma<\/em> (big with long claws) & vulgaris<\/em> (the rest). So it’s clear that male genitalia are important (once you get past nemea<\/em>) but recently I have found several specimens that have vulgaris<\/em>-type genitalia but which have the extra bristlets along wing section 2.<\/p>\n

The first pair of photos shows a standard male Phryxe heraclei<\/em> – the wing edge section has a scattering of extra bristlets on the underside of the vein between the leading edge and the wing membrane. The genitalia have very rounded surstyli and a smoothly rounded cercus:<\/p>\n