Brachypterous lesser dung fly

Found in leaf litter at Dalgety Bay this lovely brachypterous fly is allegedly a common species. Presumably I've just been overlooking it.

You can see the scutellum here with two pairs of marginal spines and no discals. You can see the middle tibia with two anterodorsals in the distal half. You can also see the costa "overshooting" R4+5 (is that the right designation? Sounds a bit off).

Anyway, glad to have it on my Sphaerocerid list. Should be easy enough to recognise in the future too

Calypterate Flies of Fife

A quickie look at the recording levels of calypterate flies from the 2006 Fife Nature list to today's list (not fully updated).

Some families are actually not too badly represented, while others are not so great. Still clearly a lot of flies to catch!

Leucophenga maculata, Dalgety Bay, 2018

I've had this on a pin from Dalgety Bay for going on two years. When I came across it while scouring boxes of "the unexamined" I couldn't remember catching it and can't believe I didn't give it more time since it's a bit "fancy". Maybe something else interesting happened at that time and it got bypassed.

When I keyed it to Drosophilidae I was thinking, "Yeah, right". Its wing length is 4mm! Well, would you believe it - it is in fact the "monster" drosophilid Leucophenga maculata. There aren't many records on NBN and none in Scotland, though who can guess how much that means. Certainly wasn't on the Fife list (though it will be on the new one!)

Ice cream tub bait trap

One family that's doing very well on the 2020 records is the Sphaeroceridae, or lesser dung flies. So far five species have been identified (and two not!). This is a family I have an emotional tie to (yes, really) because it was one of the first monographs (Pitkin, RES) I acquired when I moved out from hoverflies.

Sphaeroceridae
Copromyza nigrina - fish-baited trap
Crumomyia fimetaria - leaf litter
Crumomyia nitida - fish-baited trap
Crumomyia roserii - fish-baited trap
Lotophila atra - leaf litter

Sieving leaf litter is always a good way to pick up a sphaerocerid or two, but a ground-level bait trap seems like a definite winner. The elevated bottle traps don't seem to catch them - I think because these flies mostly don't get very far away from the ground. This is also a good way to pick up Heleomyzidae, of which 3 species have been found in this session using this trap . One of the species was also found in the elevated bottle trap, but all three were in the low-level trap. The trap is jammed up against a ruined wall so it's probably warmer and more sheltered down there too.

Heleomyzidae
Neoleria propinqua
Scoliocentra villosa
Suillia variegata (in leaf litter, not in trap)
Tephrochlamys rufiventris
Heleomyza captiosa (10.3.20)

The trap design

Ice cream tub, fish remnants, cardboard disc

Apart from the flies this trap has yielded about 100 Catops beetles, the only one of which I gen-detted being C.tristis. And boy does it make them crazy - lots of mating pairs. I suspect there may be more than one species of Catops present. Sadly none I've taken have shown signs of fungal infection.

Rot-hole rat-tails

While wandering across a little-visited area of my new patch (Cullaloe Hills, NT1888) I noticed a rot-hole in a sycamore. Fortunately I was sporting gardening gloves for leaf litter sieving and a cursory dip revealed a nice Myathropa florea larva. A further investigation later revealed two more, but nothing additional.

Suillia variegata in the Cullaloe Hills

While sieving leaf litter at the base of a wall I looked over and saw this female Suillia on the ground, which I was able to pot. It's a common Suillia which I've had on all my usual patches (Inverkeithing, Dalgety bay, Cullaloe LNR and now Cullaloe Hills). It will be from woodland in each case.

Erica McAlister on George Verrall, Radio 4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b06fn26f