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This looks like a Muscidae to me and I will tentatively go for Lispocephala erythrocera. Would I be anywhere near? About 5 mm long, photographed yesterday in shrubs near a canal near Rome, Italy.





Thanks, Sarah.

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or a female anthomyiid?

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I thought it looked just too easy :(, Sarah.

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Sarah,

I think we should form a political party for the abolition of Anthomyiidae.

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Sign me up straight away! So guys, are you going to leave me with the doubt :@? Sarah.

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As far as I understand Tony, it seems Sarah, that your fly has unterfrontal setas (in front of ocellar setas), it is the reason why Antomyiidae.
Nikita

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Thanks Nikita, although I'm so ignorant, I'm still not sure what I'm looking for :(, Sarah.

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Hi Sarah
if you look at your first picture, you will see a small pair of crossed bristles on the frons just in front of the ocelli. Most, though not all, anthomyiids have these crossed frontal bristles or setulae (setulae are just very small bristles). They are also found in a few muscids.

A better character to separate anthomyiids from muscids is to look at the anal vein. This always stops short of the wing margin in muscids. It almost always reaches the wing margin (though sometimes just as a crease) in anthomyiids.

In those anthomyiids with an abbreviated anal vein, the frons always has crossed bristles and there are some small pale hairs under the scutellum.

Muscids never have crossed bristles on the frons at the same time as having pale hairs under the scutellum.

So if you have the specimen you can always tell a muscid from an anthomyiid.

But with your photos ...
We cannot see clearly whether the anal vein reaches the wing margin, and we cannot see whether the scutellum has pale hairs underneath.
So the only way to tell what it is, is to recognise it using some other characters. I don't recognise it, but it does look like a number of anthomyiid females I have seen, and does not remind me of any muscid I know. I don't think it's Lispocephala which usually has partly pale antennae.

So yes, I am going to leave you with doubt! :p If I had a bit more experience, or a lot more time, I'm sure we could find an ID for it. At the present rate, I guess we will have photos of every European genus on Diptera.info in about ten years time. What a great resource that's going to be! :D

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Thanks tons Tony for the exhaustive description. This site is already getting to be a great resource, so I can imagine what it will be in a few years time! As soon as the weather gets too bad for photos, I'm going to sit down and see whether I've got anything that could interest Paul in the gallery ;), Sarah.

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I think this may well be the same fly. Does it help clear up the mystery?





Fingers crossed, Sarah.

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No, your second set of flies looks very different to me. I think this fly belongs to a different family, but I do not risk anything more.

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In fact, now that I see them both together on the same page, they look different to me too :(.

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Hi Sarah
Similar overall shape, yes, but it is a different family - Scathophagidae, Scathophaga stercoraria female, I think.

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Goodness Tony! It looks completely unlike the S. stercoraria che ho in archivio :(. It just gets more confusing! Sarah.

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Have a look at http://www.dipter...post_14546.
Nikita's brilliant photo demonstrates the difference between typical male and female of stercoraria.
But yes, it does get more confusing, because the males of stercoraria come in different forms - one is big and furry (as in Nikita's photo) - but there is a form merdaria which looks very like the female (green and short-haired). It has male genitalia but they are unlike the normal form. I can't remember the details exactly, but I think merdaria is an infertile form of the male, which has suffered some physiological castration. :o

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In fact, I think I've always come across the big furry macho ones :o! Thanks Tony, I'll get studying.