---

Hi everyone,

I am hoping you can help me brush up my fly identification skills. This 3 mm (top of head to tip of abdomen) fly was collected in a grape juice trap.

Date: 10. VII. 2009
Location: Cawston, Okanagan-Similkameen, BC, Canada.
Habitat: apple orchard surrounded by Artemisia tridentata scrubland.

---

Picture doesn't appear. Possibly you have to remove spaces from the file name.

---

I can't attach it. The image is 175 kb, width is 600 pixels and the file name is just letters and numbers, nothing else. File extension is .jpg

---

And no space in the name?

---

No spaces, no capital letters and resolution is 72 dpi. The image was processed in Photoshop in order to remove color cast (blue-green), halo and other artifacts from microscope. Does anyone have any suggestion how my overcome this issue?

---

Maybe you could try uploading it with ImageShack and place the image link in your message...

---

http://img840.imageshack.us/i/pcs44jul10.jpg/

This is the link to the dorsolateral aspect of the little guy. I hope this works since i have linked an image before this way.

---

http://img684.imageshack.us/i/pcs44jul10v.jpg/

This is the ventrolateral image (ventral head, lateral side of thorax).

I hope this links will suffice/work because attaching images to my posts apparently does not work.

Thanks for your patience.

---

It works! No idea about the ID, though.

---

Looks like Minettia desmometopa (Lauxaniidae) but probably a related nearctic species rather than desmometopa itself.

---

Thanks so much Paul for your help, i really appreciate it. What is the main characteristic of the Lauxaniidae family compared to the related families of microflies?

Marius