---

Hi All,

Ben sent me the photo's hoping to get an answer on the strange 'balloons'. As I had never seen this before, I didn't have an answer. At first I thought of a parasite as well, though the symetry is staggering!!
I send these pictures to two other Tephritid specialist and one of them had the hypothosis(!) that it might be pheromon producing organs, which are inflated to spread them more easily. He had seen it several times within Tephritids, but also in Lauxanids! His argument for these swollen arguments are interesting, for as you can see the Terellia has no wingpatter, belonging to a terribly complex species-group, of which several species are known to occur sympartically on the same host!! In order to rule out the accident of trying to copulate with the wrong species, normally acounted for by the wingdisplay of Tephritids, the males produce these pheromones. Very interesting.
Especially the photo's of Dima. For this species Goniglossum wiedemanni, does have a wingpattern and should not have to rely on the pheromones, but rather on the display of the wings, which I have seen them do in the field. Nevertheless also the species with wingpatterns do produce of course pheromones.

In any case, it's neither a Dryinidae, as you can see from Ben's picture, which is always a really sack-like body, and as far as I know always black, besides the fact that they only attack Cicada's. Nor is it a Strepsipteron, the male puparia look different, darker in colour and with a clearly visible head-capsule, wtih structures like mandibles and eye-spots (which are light penetrant and which help the male emerge when the light is sufficient), furthermore the puparium of a Strepsipteron never protrudes as far as these balloons. Oh, and it's neither a female strepsipteron for the cephalothorax that protrudes only a little is much more flattened in all species I know of Strepsiptera. There is one species of Strepsiptera that attacks Tephritids: Dipterophagus dacini (or something similar), which attacks Dacus and Bacrtocera somewhere in Australia and / or Southeast Asia.

John