Posted by jorgemotalmeida on 05-05-2007 21:32
#1
Hi
* locality - Silgueiros - Viseu - PORTUGAL
* date - 2007.05.05
* size - 8 mm (medium fly)
* habitat - openland
* substrate - grass
Stratyiomidae - Chloromyia formosa male - I think.
I was seeking in grass for pipunculid and acrocerids, but no success. :( I tried to find more conopids (near bees, bumblebees) and scyomizids (near streamer) as well, and no success. However I found this beautiful stratyiomid fly. I saw two great natural moments: 1 - wasp Anoplius sp. (pompiliid wasp) carrying to its nest a lycosid spider ; 2 - Doli catching a prey exactly as I saw in the movie that Grichanov put in diptera.info. :) (besides... doli are everywhere here! they are so many!!)
Posted by Kahis on 05-05-2007 22:41
#4
jorgemotalmeida wrote:
I was seeking in grass for pipunculid and acrocerids, but no success. :(
At least here in the north meeting an acrocerid is almost a once-in-a-lifetime experiance. Me and my friends have found these flies exactly twice during a combined collecting effort of roughly 30 years! The total museum material for our 5 species is less than 25 exx, less than one specimen for 10 person-years of collecting - pretty much in line with the current rate.
The flight time is apparently very short and the daily swarming period is only 0.5 hours for the only Finnish species with published notes on the topic. Sweeping seems to be an inefficient method for finding acrocerids.
Pipunculids, on other other hand, are easily found during the summer, mostly around forest edges - certainly the most common habitat of any kind in Finland