Clear-winged Striped Bee Fly Flying, profile | Brown-winged Striped Bee Fly Female, dorsal, ~13mm | |||||
Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | ||||
Order: | Flies (Diptera) | ||||
Family: | Bee Fly (Bombyliidae) | ||||
Species: | Clear-winged Striped Bee Fly (Villini sp ES01) | ||||
This Photo: | Flying, posterior | ||||
General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA), the Adelaide Hills and elsewhere There's a good chance there are multiple species represented here. Striped Bee Flies (tribe Villini) are very difficult to separate into genera. We have used wing colour to separate them into groups, which isn't particularly scientific, but a reasonable delineation until more taxonomic work is done to sort this group out. In the past we had these as Villa sp, but we then learnt there was also Exechohypopion sp. We had a go at separating one out, but Tony Daley very kindly explained the errors in the Australian taxonomy related to this group and that it's difficult to be sure a fly belongs to one genus or other; unless you can get to species in which case species characteristics are able to be used to go to that level. We (Marie & I) strongly suspect we have a lot of undescribed species and generally from now on will be putting them in the Villini tribe, instead of the Villa genus. | |||||
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