Velvet Bee Fly
Profile
Small Fluffy Bee Fly
Dorsal
| Velvet Bee Fly Profile | | Small Fluffy Bee Fly Dorsal | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | |||
| Order: | Flies (Diptera) | ||||
| Family: | Bee Fly (Bombyliidae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | Velvet Bee Fly (Munjua erugata) | ||||
| This Photo: | 🔍White Band🔎 | ||||
Thank you Dr Chris Lambkin for identifying this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere 1st Record in SA on Atlas: ~25mm long, 19mm wing length. With a thick white lateral stripe under the abdomen (which we didn't photograph), around the middle/s3. Chris said "Yellow scale band T2 - that's the give-away, wing pattern with no extensions and not meeting wing margin, and abdominal pattern." In other discussion she noted the Yellow band on T2 was more important than the wing pattern not meeting the margin. We asked Chris what the Etymology (meaning of the binomial name) was and she replied "The name *Munjua* is from the Aboriginal term munju for fly from the Diyari people of northern SA (Austin 1994). erugata is from the Latin erugo smooth referring to the velvety abdominal appearance" Similar Species: Gigantic Balaana Bee Fly (Balaana gigantea) | |||||
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