Go-striped Bee Fly
S3, Head
Riverland
Hunchbacked Bee Fly
Male, profile
 
                      
Go-striped Bee Fly (Comptosia vittata)Class: Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta)
Order: Flies (Diptera)
Family: Bee Fly (Bombyliidae)     iNaturalist Observation
Species: Go-striped Bee Fly (Comptosia vittata)
This Photo:     S3, ventral

Thank you Dr Chris Lambkin & Anthony Paul for confirming the id of this species for us

General Species Information:
Found in the Riverland and possibly elsewhere
~15mm body length. As with most Comptosia, these have white wing tips, with the wing veins surrounded by shadow colour.
The body stripes are not always as strong as shown here.
The eyes are indented/emarginate at the rear.
There were a large number of them feeding on a Sugarwood flowers, along with many other insects.
We thought this was C. heliophila, but Chris highlighted on iNaturalist that "C. vittata is easily distinguished by the additional i-r crossvein between R4 and R5 (clear in this image) and the prominent, median, grey, abdominal vitta and distribution. C. heliophila has no median grey abdominal vitta and is a higher altitude SE Qld and N NSW species". She later added "The group is a nightmare as there are 100's not described, and you need specimens usually."

Copyright © 2019-2024 Brett & Marie Smith. All Rights Reserved. Photographed 21-Oct-2019
This species is an Australian Native Species, not listed in the SA Murray Mallee Survey of 2010.