Dear Susan, Thank you for sending the specimen and such full data. It is rather damaged, lacking most of its legs, which makes identification less certain. Nevertheless, it is a most unusual specimen. In the colour of the interfrontalia and the structure of the female eighth tergite it fits Atherigona (A.) varia (Meigen), which species one would expect to find in Central France. However, it has almost the entire dorsum of the abdomen not merely to some degree infuscate, which one might expect, but deep black. Such a coloration of the dorsum of the abdomen I have only seen in females of the east African species A. hargreavesi van Emden and some oriental species of the subgenus Acritochaeta. A. varia is in colour a very variable species, but that variation is usually expressed in the fore femur (missing on both sides in your specimen), rather than the abdomen. A. laevigata (Loew) is a common african species. Lowland specimens are predominantly yellow in colour, but those from the highlands of east Africa are predominantly dark. I suppose that in the case of your specimen a climatic melanism could be the cause of its coloration. I would certainly like to retain the specimen. Thank you very much. I hope that at some time you will be able to collect material of both sexes from the same locality in which you found it. In the meantime I think it best that you consider it to be a most unusual specimen of A. varia. Yours, John