CLOSED: Therevid Fly?

I found a pic of a fly on the BWARS site and I have one that looks similar, called a Therevid Fly,

http://www.bwars.com/Ectemnius_continuus.htm

This gets interesting, a search for Therevid Fly has brought some very good fly sites up! Actually there was only 4 links from 2 web sites, but they're all on the one site.

The british checklist has 14 species in 6 genera in the family Therevidae, common name Stileto Flies.

http://www.dipteristsforum.org.uk/html/family?id=15264100

A good list of links for flies here,

http://www.dipteristsforum.org.uk/html/resources.php

Somehow I got to here, a description of Stiletto Flies and their uses. The larvae look like a wire worm which I always thought were bad.

http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/cee/therevid/index.html

I followed the link Brachycera to Therevidae, good site here!

http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Diptera&contgroup=Endopterygota

In which is listed 3 subfamilies (?), Phycinae, Agapophytinae, Therevinae.

That all came from a Rumanian Entomology site with links to other Orders.

http://entomology.ru/entomol_group/diptera/diptera.htm

The question is, does mine fit anywhere here?

http://tolweb.org/Therevidae/10463

Handsome little thing, I've seen it a few times, it's not huge, about the size of a blowfly but thinner.

Janet, I found this site with a key to the Therevid species of North-West Europe: http://home.hccnet.nl/mp.van.veen/therevidae/therevidae.html
which should help you. It looks to me like a species of Thereva, but I have not tried to get down to the species. If you can catch one, you might be able to work through the key?

Ken

Great site Ken, it looks a lot like Thereva handlirschi but Thereva nobilitata is also similar.

I don't think I could catch one (wouldn't want to hurt it either!), but the pic is well blown up with enough detail to see so I could try going through the keys for obvious differences.

I wonder if I could find which species are supposed to be here, there was mention of one when I searched for the UK only, that's how I found the Diptera site. That is Thereva plebeja which is the most common Therevid in Dungeness, Kent.

http://www.dipteristsforum.org.uk/html/dd?id=33

Which if I had got around to searching for brings up your link first in a google search! However, there is a pic of that and it doesn't look like mine, nor does the colour description fit.

This Norwegian wikipedia has a pic similar but no species name, but their list of Thereva includes Thereva handlirschi

http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stilettfluer

Both Thereva handlirschi and Thereva nobilitata are mentioned on this site,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_soldierflies_and_allies_recorded_in_Britain

Interesting that Thereva handlirschi is called "golden Scottish stiletto ", mine has a golden appearance.

Posting this in case I get shut down, searching T nobilitata.

A front on pic of Thereva nobilitata(?) which has facial hair as mine has, but it is very enlarged and looks enhanced.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lordv/24696360/in/set-590338/

I think they had got it wrong, the next site shows a different colour insect

http://www.plantpress.com/wildlife/o412-commonstilettofly.php

But the description they give sounds promising:
"
This fly has a long brown hairy body with slender legs. The adults, conspicuous with their golden hairs, can be found sitting quietly on open ground or vegetation,"

The next site also has it, there are more sites with Thereva nobilitata than Thereva handlirschi and the pic looks promising.

http://www.gwydir.demon.co.uk/insects/therevidae.htm

It states "Larvae omnivorous in leaf litter" of which I have plenty, but that could be true for any of the genus.

Here it is again, Thereva nobilitata, it compares very well.

http://www.gardensafari.net/english/robberflies.htm

On that note, and another pic of mine, and it's gone 4am here, I am fairly happy to call it Thereva nobilitata.

I have some back views too, so many pics I'm trying to organise them!

I'm not sure if this is the exact same fly, male/female, dull wet day, but is the same otherwise.

On a sunny day on a yellow leaf.

Same fly as last pic flying away