Wednesday 20 February 2019

Dryope flaveola -

Formerly Dryomyza, this is a species which is consistently showing up in a baited bottle trap in woodland right now. These are especially dark individuals which seems to be a feature of a winter generation.

If it turns out they develop in the bait that will be a new discovery about this fly (I think) as no-one seems to have previously nailed down this part of their life cycle.

The Dryomyzidae have undergone a fair bit of shuffling it seems and I haven't entirely got my head around what went where taxonomically!




Tuesday 12 February 2019

Phronia humeralis new to Fife from Cullaloe LNR

In moss in the roadside W11 woodland in January, this gave me the runaround as either P.humeralis or P.forcipula but it seems they may have been synonymised (to be confirmed).

It's a fungus gnat in the family Myctephilidae.



Dicranota lucidipennis new to Fife from Cullaloe LNR

A female hanging on grass over fast moving water channel. This is a pretty widespread species but not apparently recorded in Fife before. I got hung up on a misunderstanding of the keys so ID was provided by Geoff Foale via Dipterists Forum (after that it was, of course, obvious!).

It's only the third species of Pediciidae for the county.