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An interesting Calliphorinae from my garden. It was sizable, but not large, and distinctivly metallic, much more so than the C. vicina that is common in my garden.

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Another view.

The thoracic striping is quite distinctive, too.

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And another photo.

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It's a male Melinda. I cannot see whether the presutural ia-bristle is absent or not, but the eyes seem to be closer than the width of the flagellum: probably M. gentilis.

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That was my first thought as well, however, the calypter is darkened. So probably one of those more metallic Bellardia’s ….

Theo

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Hi Theo, I'm not totally convinced with Bellardia - although I've just seen 4 species until now. In Steven Falk's key the calypters of M. gentilis look darkend, too, what I think has to do with the dark wingbase. And my Bellardias all have brown eyes. Perhaps it's neither Melinda nor Bellardia?

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Hi Eric,

In Melinda, the calypter is white and here it is clearly darkened, notricks in these pictures.
Bellardia is not my thing, but there are a number of ‘aberrant’ species like bayeri

https://diptera.info/photogallery.php?photo_id=10034

I don’t see any other alternative for Bellardia.

Theo

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Based on Mihalyi (Fauna Hunagriae) the differentiating character between Melinda and Bellardia should be if the calypters are hairy above or not. Also Mihályi explicitly states that Melinda should have white calypters. These information point towards Bellardia.

THe Bellardia key is very difficult to use. R5 is open which narrows down the choices to

stricta
pusilla
bayeri - no record in Hungary
biseta
agilis
(as in Mihalyi)

(However, later Mihalyi states that this character is not at all stable)

Now the key here is quite difficult to use. The first split is made by the pruinosity of abdomen. In the field this fly really looked shiny. So this would narrow this down to stricta, pusilla and bayeri. THe description of stricta does not really fit. So we are left with pusilla and bayeri, the last one has no record from Hungary.

The pusilla descriotion fits better, but not perfectly. Unfortunately many of the characters listed are highly subjective, for example if the color is greenish blue rather than bluish green etc. It is stated that the bristles on tergite 3 and 4 are obviously long, whihc may be the case here, but what obviously long is difficult to interpret, unless you have a collection available.

pusilla is stated to be one of the common species in Hunagry. (IMHO Melinda, Bellardia are all uncommon at best).


Earlier Theo identified : http://xespok.net/diptera/main.php/v/Calliphoridae/Calliphorinae/Bellardia/Bellardia_pusilla_female_47314.jpg.html
this as pusilla female, but this looks quite different (being distinctively greenish)

So my conclusion is that this could be a male Bellardia pusilla (cf), but this is an ID that is more based on faith than facts.

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Thanks a lot, Gabor and Theo!
I will open a new thread with two Calliphoridae (♀♂) both of 2020-08-19, which I had identified as Melinda gentilis among others based on this: https://diptera.i...d_id=94454
I think the male looks quite similar to Gabor's but of course I'm in doubt now if my ID was correct.

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Further research into the subcject

Bellardia pusilla (Meigen 1826) is now Bellardia viarum (R-D 1830)
Belladria agilis (Meigen 1826) is now Bellardia vulgaris (R-D 1830)