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Hello,

since I was told that I had found Rhagio latipennis recently, I am unsure when I find R. strigosus now. The night before last night several Rhagio males visited the light in our garden (northwest Germany). Most of them looked like normal (size ca. 10 mm) R. strigosus, but one individual was very small, not bigger than a Chrysopilus, only about 5-6 mm.

More pictures here:
http://insektenfo...adID=69959

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Pic #2 of "normal" sized one.

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Very small individual with Chironomid.

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Pic #2 of small individual.

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Excellent male strigosus, as far as I am concerned: long wings, eyes touching and short third antennal segment. If Libor agrees, please submit for the gallery !


Theo

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Thank you, Theo!

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I am sorry, but I disagree. According my knowledge and opinion, both are Rhagio scolopaceus males. R. strigosus has pleura largerly yellowish and postscutellum yellow with grey spot. Juergen's animal has pleura and postcutellum grey. Moreover, croos-wein with red circle is without any infuscation in strigosus. And I see small infuscation on Juergen's picture.
Juergen, please, try to collect time to time some Rhagionids. It is always better to study them under microscope.
Libor

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OK, so let's not submit it (yet).

To me, the following arguments favour strigosus
* the date (end of July, fresh speicmen !)
* the antennal shape, as seen in the second picture (magnify the left antenna)
* the isolated dark stigma. The infuscation mentioned by Libor is very minute.


Theo

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Hello Libor and Theo,

thanks to you both! So it is not that easy as I thought...

I am no expert, but I experience here Rhagio for many years. I know, size is not an argument and time of year may not be one, too. But I see the much bigger R. scolopaceus males always here in May or beginning of June at other places, mostly fence stakes at meadows near hedges.

These smaller Rhagio I see only in mid summer at shadowy places in the forest or at tree trunks in our garden. And they are all much smaller than those flies in spring. So most likely not the result of low diet of a few larvae. Generally, for my layman's eyes they are not the same animals...
Sorry that I do not collect animals, I am a photographer only.

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Hello,

do I see it right, that there is still no picture of Rhagio strigosus in the gallery? That (or what I believe it is) is one of the most abundant Rhagio species here. I have made hundreds of images over the years, by far too many to post even the best of them here. Therefore I have packed some of them in a ZIP-archive and uploaded it to my server. If someone here is interested in examining it and perhaps could tell me, which flies are probably misidentified and which could possibly be put into the gallery of this forum, here is the URL:

http://insektenfo...Rhagio.zip

But beware: it is 40 MB! And after some time I will delete it from the server. Thank you!

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Juergen, I understand you are a photographer only. But, as you see, time to time you cannot get names for your animal without study under microscope. The believe your animal is probably strigosus, I believe it is probably scolopaceus. You can choose... Or collect few specimens for the verification.
Libor

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Hello Libor,

I know that determination from a photo will always be restrained. I am interested not only in Diptera, but in all insects and spiders, and it is impossible to start a collection for the whole class Arthropoda. So I have once decided to not kill animals for identification purposes and be happy with identifying as close as possible after images only.