Pinocchio

A spectacular spring day. Continuing my hover fly kick, I decided to try a different habitat, lotic instead of lentic. In the afternoon, I hiked the trails along Spring Creek in the upper Cowling Arboretum. As in the past, the most insect activity was found along the sandy banks around the semi-open plunge pool where the creek enters the arboretum, flowing from a large culvert beneath a city street.

Many damseflies needled their way through the vegetation. A variety of bees worked the Creeping Charlie and Yellow Rocket flowers. I gave the bees and the damselflies the cold shoulder; I wanted to see more hover flies. The same four species observed yesterday around the ponds, I observed today along the creek, with one remarkable addition---the American Heineken Fly (Rhingia nasica). The only species in this genus in North America, this fly is instantly recognizable because of its Pinocchio-like nose. This odd-shaped shnoz houses a long tongue used for reaching nectar in deep flowers. The European species Rhingia campestris was given the common name Heineken Fly after the humorous adds by the beer company of that name, adds that stated 'Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach,' recognizing that this fly could reach parts of flowers that other hover flies can not.

One of the frustrating hindrances encountered when reading old natural history books and monographs is that many of the scientific names have changed or are no longer recognized as valid due to subsequent changes and revisions. Luckily for fly researchers there is a wonderful online resource---Systema Dipterorum: The Biosystematic Database of World Diptera (www.diptera.com). Old scientific names can be searched to find current statuses and current accepted names. For instance, Horace Telford in The Syrphidae of Minnesota (published nearly eighty years ago) described a new species of Microdon. The name he proposed for this species isn't listed at bugguide.net. Checking the Diptera database, one finds that Telford's species's name, Microdon robusta. is now considered a junior synonym of Microdon tristis. I wish such a database was available for other orders of insect as well, especially Hymenoptera.

Publicado el mayo 8, 2017 04:13 MAÑANA por scottking