Diptera.info

Posted by Torsten Dikow on 08-07-2011 19:45

This is a great image of a Mydidae and certainly the north-easternmost record of a Syllegomydinae in the Iberian Peninsula. Hispanomydas hispanicus is found near Alicante (see http://synthesis....spanomydas) and Syllegomydas algiricus has recently been recorded near Almeria, Cabo de Gata, Retamar by Miguel Carles-Tolra in 2006, which is much further south.
Leptomydas lusitanicus, a Leptomydinae and the most widespread Mydidae in the Iberian Peninsula, is found as far north as Valencia (see http://synthesis....usitanicus).
The species looks like the one photographed by Mario Diges last year near Alicante (see http://www.dipter...d_id=24014) and although I identified that species initially as a Syllegomydas species, I now think it is Hispanomydas hispanicus as is this species! Why? Well I studied specimens from the Natural History Museum in London from Alicante (collected in the 1970s), which is also the type locality of Hispanomydas hispanicus, and they do not belong to Syllegomydas algiricus. Unfortunately, the type specimens of Hispanomydas hispanicus are lost and the description by Arias (1914) is very short so that there is some doubt concerning the identification. The antennal character that Arias used to distinguish this species from Syllegomydas is in my view just an artefact of the specimens he had available some 100 years ago.

Great image of a rare fly!