Key to the Milesiini of Australia and New Zealand
Happy Christmas to our Antipodean friends!
I've been trying this out over the last few days and it seems to work for me. Suggestions for improvement are welcome.
There are not a huge number of these flies and they seem to mostly be large, distinctlive and charismatic.
I'd like to extend this further to the wider region but there's a just a couple of descriptions I can't get hold of - hopefully I'll do that at some point.
The 18 species covered are as follows:
Subtribe CRIORHININA
Malometasternum rufocaudatum
Deineches fulva, D hackeri, D nudiventris
Subtribe TEMNOSTOMINA
Odyneromyia illucens, O iridescens, O spadix, O transparens
Subtribe TROPIDIINA
Orthoprosopa (Orthoprosopa) grisea
Orthoprosopa (Paratropidia) bilineata, O (P) multicolor
Syritta hackeri, S luteinervis, S orientalis
Subtribe XYLOTINA
Chalcosyrphus (Hardyimyia) elongata
Chalcosyrphus (Neploneura) pleuralis, C (N) victoriensis
Xylota flavitarsis
Comments
@edanko, @zdanko, @reiner this is one of the things I've been up to lately.... Hope it's of some use down under :)
Excellent work! I did some testing, and it haven't run into any troubles yet. I only wish you would spend some time illustrating these - it makes it so much easier to understand, and your work on the Volucellini key was very nice.
Cool.
Yes it's a fair point about the illustration but I've gotten more choosy about what I illustrate because of the time it takes. Partly I hope people can use the linked observations in place of illustration. On the other hand these could mostly be illustrated by photos. @reiner as you've observed a lot of these, would you mind me using some of your pics for illustration as a start?
Top work @matthewvosper - I am happy for my images to be used in a feature like this.
Great, thanks!
A few pictures added, a few more requested, but I shall add as I get permissions.
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