White-tipped Bee Fly
Posterior
Go-striped Bee Fly
S3, profile
| White-tipped Bee Fly Posterior | | Go-striped Bee Fly S3, profile | | ||
 | 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: | 🔍S1, dorsal🔎 | ||||
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." | |||||
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