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Posted by Peter Preus on 29-08-2016 00:36

Hi,
the fly in the attached image should be Villa sp. Is it possible to determine the species? If it could be more than one I would be glad to read them all.
Image date is 22.08.2015, location is my garden in the Rhine River Plain between Heidelberg and Darmstadt in Germany.
Thanks,
Peter

Posted by Sundew on 29-08-2016 00:46

Villa it is for sure, but alas! More can't be said from a photo - compare http://www.dipter...d_id=74921...
Enjoy the forum nevertheless! Regards, Sundew

Posted by piros on 29-08-2016 09:10

But still, it belongs to the Villa hottentotta species group, doesn't it?
Greetings,
Henrik

Edited by piros on 29-08-2016 09:11

Posted by Peter Preus on 29-08-2016 10:55

Thank you for your answers!
As apparently one cannot say which Villa species my image shows I would be glad if anybody could tell me which Villa species besides hottentotta could be possible because they look almost) the same (of course restricted to species which have been found in Germany so far).
Greetings,
Peter

Posted by Sundew on 29-08-2016 12:30

V. hottentotta group should be ok, of course. In former years I thoughtlessly dared to call my specimens V. hottentotta, as they seemed to be so distinctive, but our Bombyliidae expert David Gibbs was not amused. If you search the forum for the keyword "hottentotta" in ascending order you get a lot of information by David and others (in the first years there were still intensive discussions on characters). See, e.g., http://www.dipter...ad_id=8979. As I understand David, the genus Villa is in urgent need of revision as to the species delimitations. This task demands collecting a lot of specimens to study morphology as well as DNA sequences. Only then it will be clear how many German species we can expect. Maybe there will be new ones to be described?