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Posted by johnes81 on 25-10-2016 11:51

very difficult to tell from these photos. I suspect that the species in the first photo could be Villa modesta but villa species are known to be variable in appearance.

conjecture only leads me to think Villa modesta (first photo) and Villa hottentotta (second photo).

Maybe an expert can see otherwise...

Posted by Sundew on 25-10-2016 12:23

I am not getting tired to repeat: search in the old threads for your suspected species - you will get a lot of information! In the case of Villa cf. hottentotta I can only cite our expert David Gibbs:
"experts in Villa? wish there was. apart from saying it looks to be one of the many hottentotta-group species there is no hope without a specimen and even then identification is likely to be tentative." http://www.dipter...ad_id=5866
"after carefully comparing your photos with my specimens i conclude that they cannot be identified. the only thing i can say is that they appear to be closer to my continental specimens of modesta than to hottentotta. Unfortunately i have no specimens of paniscus which, if truly a separate species, is very similar to both modesta and hottentotta.
one thing i can say for certain, any photo of this group of Villa which has not been collected, and in the case of males dissected, is very unlikely to be reliably named. even specimens are very difficult to name and this will remain the case untill the whole genus is revised." http://www.dipter...ad_id=8979

Posted by Gansucha on 25-10-2016 17:27

I read the last message and realized that define this genus to species is not possible without samples. Thank you again!
I have, no matter how skilled, hard to understand sex. Because of that and asked again whether the third and fourth shots female?
Sorry for bad English.

Posted by Piluca_Alvarez on 26-10-2016 11:06

Gansucha, to separate sex in Villa, pay attention to the separation between the eyes. In males eyes are narrowly separated, in females the separation is wider.

However, this rule doesn't work in 100% of the species. There is a little bunch of species in Europe whose males also have wider separation than usual so one has to be always careful about this feature.