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Hi to all


This fly amazed me! Well I got these flies through a friend of mine who investigates the genetical relationships among Diptera, specially Drosophilidae. For those who don't know this fly is a Zaprionus indianus. The most striking feature is conspicuous and unmistakable: the presence of two long stripes that goes along the scutum and scutellum extending to the first segment of antenna. The orbital plates are a little silvery. And the fore femur bears a row of nodes with a small spur together with a long spinulose seta. (not visible in photos, though) Z. indianus is native to Africa, Middle East and southern Eurasia (Chassagnard & Kraaijeveld 1991; Bächli 1999-2005). Also this fly is now present in Spain. It can be found in Italy and Baleary Isles as well .
These flies (Zaprionus in general) are tiny flies and they never reached over 4 mm lenght. I could manage to take some good photos to Zaprionus indianus' larva. You can really see the cephalo-pharyngeal skeleton clearly in profile and in other views. This is a good feature to identify the species with posterior spiracle analysis.

I will show another Zaprionus that is Zaprionus sepsoides (soon). And I have 2 specimens of Zaprionus davidii kept in ethanol 70%. The species were separated due the differences of appendages that eggs have. The species were separated in an early stage.
You can see here other photos in my new blog: http://superegnum...press.com/

And now just for fun:
Well, a friend of mine saw the photo of this fly, and decided to make a surprise to me. So he sketched in two different ways this fly. :) One with the white eyes and the other..lol :D Just take a look...