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Good evening,

I'm again reaching out for your help regarding an ID.
I took this picture in July 2011, at a locality called Carvalhal, located near Grândola, around 100 Km south of Lisbon. It was taken on a coastal dune, in a pinetree wood.
From everything I could find on the net, the most similar would be a Triplasius sp.?
If so, could you please help me with the species?
Thanks in advance for any hints.
Kind regards,

Fernando

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Not Triplasius but Bombylius to me. The abdominal pattern reminds me of B. cruciatus, but the rest of the creature is off. I have never seen a female B. cruciatus with such thoracic pattern. Might be a local form or simply variability though. Or even a different species. But the knowledge of Iberian Bombylius is in state of chaos (I am working on it though), so I think won't be easy to be sure of its identity at the moment. Sorry I cannot help further :( Perhaps somebody else can recognize it...

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Muchas gracias Piluca,

Just as a possible confirmation, I have found a photo of a female B. cruciatus female on flickr (https://hiveminer.com/Tags/bombylius,macro/Interesting), and it looks just like the one in my photo.
I think that I'll tentatively classify it as a cruciatus female.
Thank you so much for your help. Please let me know if you need some records of Bombyliidae for your work. I have GPS coordinates for every observation I made with the correspondent photos, and I will be happy to share them with you.
Kind regards,

Fernando

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Hi, Fernando :)

Well, the one in the link looks like Bombylius cruciatus indeed. So yours should be too ;) However, I would be happier with other opinions B)

I will be delighted to see your pictures ;) You can get in touch with me through this e-mail: pilucaaf@gmail.com

Thanks!! |t