{"id":1759,"date":"2025-03-11T20:09:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T20:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tachinidae.org.uk\/blog\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2025-09-04T13:14:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:14:22","slug":"tachina-fera-vs-magnicornis-vs-tetramera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tachinidae.org.uk\/blog\/tachina-fera-vs-magnicornis-vs-tetramera\/","title":{"rendered":"Tachina fera vs magnicornis vs tetramera"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The recent arrival of Tachina magnicornis<\/em> in Suffolk and then later in Kent has created a quite tricky problem for us at the recording scheme. It has always been very easy to identify T. fera <\/em>in photos and to distinguish them from vaguely similar species like Nemoraea pellucida<\/em> or Peleteria rubescens<\/em>, but now we have a genuinely very similar species to contend with. Furthermore, Christer is convinced that they have a third species called T. tetramera <\/em>in Scandinavia but there it seems to be a montane species so we are not expecting it here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Basham has very kindly helped out here by providing a lot of specimens of T. magnicornis<\/em> and together we have gone through them and compared to a selection of specimens sent to me by Christer Bergstrom. All 3x species are a little bit variable and they seem to vary across their geographic ranges and between the 2 broods, but we have managed to work out some stable features of at least the males that seem to be very reliable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n