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The Tachinid Times The Tachinid Times
ISSUE 6
February 1993
Jim O'Hara, editor
Agriculture Canada, Biological Resources Division
Centre for Land & Biological Resources Research
C.E.F., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1A 0C6
Once again I assemble here the contributions I
have received during the past year, and provide a
bibliography to tachinid literature. There has been a
significant number of publications on the Tachinidae
during the past year indicating a healthy interest in
tachinid research, despite the ever dwindling resources
that are being spent on biological research during these
difficult economic times.
Our Centre is faced each year with less operating
funds and a smaller scientific staff, but by world
standards we still enjoy a privileged position. One of
the benefits of this situation is that I am permitted to
produce and distribute this newsletter at no cost to the
readership. Another is that a large number of
entomological and abstracting journals are subscribed
to by our Entomology library, allowing me to
assemble a fairly good tachinid bibliography with
relatively little effort. As long as these circumstances
continue I am content to produce The Tachinid
Times, provided also there is support for it. This
support must be more than a desire to receive the
newsletter each year, for such support does not
generate any news. News means contributions, so
please think about this in the fall when I write to ask if
you have anything to include in issue 7. I extend my
thanks to all of you who have helped with this issue.
British Tachinidae Handbook (by J. O'Hara)
Robert Belshaw was commissioned several years
ago by the Royal Entomological Society to write a
tachinid handbook in the series "Handbook for the
Identification of British Insects". The handbook, in
manuscript form, was submitted to the editors of the
RES in February 1991. The following information
about the handbook was supplied by Peter Barnard of
the Natural History Museum (in letter dated 11
January 1993): "As far as I understand the situation,
the manuscript was finished some time ago and has
been in the hands of the editors ever since. It has
never formally been submitted to the Museum for
publication. However, I now hear that editorial work
on the manuscript has been completed and that it
should be submitted for publication very shortly. At
this stage I cannot give you a definite date for
publication, because this will obviously depend on the
exact timing of its handover by the editors and on
other handbooks in various stages of production."
We can unfortunately conclude from Barnard's
letter that publication of Belshaw's handbook is not
close at hand, even though two years have elapsed
since its submission to the RES. Persons interested in
seeing Belshaw's handbook appear as soon as possible
may wish to indicate this desire in letters to the RES.
Third International Congress of Dipterology (by J.
O'Hara)
Plans are progressing for the Congress, which
will be held in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, August 15-
19, 1994. Members of the Organizing Committee met
in Baltimore, Maryland during the Annual Meeting of
the Entomological Society of America in December
1992 to review progress to date, assign duties, and
discuss other Congress-related business. The Second
Announcement will be mailed this summer or fall, and
will include registration and abstract forms. Persons
wishing to receive the Second Announcement who did
not receive, or respond to, the First Announcement
should write the Congress Chair, Steve Marshall The Tachinid Times
Page 2
Issue 6, February 1993
(address in mailing list).
Persons wishing to arrange
visits to the Canadian National Collection in Ottawa
before or after the Congress should contract Jeff
Cumming (same address as Jim O'Hara).
Collecting in Greenland (by Stig Andersen)
I travelled to southeastern Greenland last summer
(15.vii.-18.viii.1992) as part of a mainly geological
and archaeological expedition to island-bound
Skjoldungen and the famous valley Dronning Maries
Dal near the inland ice (an area abandoned for twenty
years and visited today only rarely by seal hunters).
The insects of these areas are virtually unknown but
are of interest because of the southern (subarctic)
position of these areas on the east coast of Greenland.
Due to the very steep and high mountains (2000m in
altitude) arising immediately after the seashore and the
presence of many glaciers, the climate and vegetation
is arctic. The vegetation is restricted to patches of
coppices (dominated by willow or birch) intermingled
with patches of meadow, grassland and heath and
beautiful herbslows extending up to an altitude of
500m.
When we arrived in Skjoldungen on July 18th
most of the snow in the lowlands had melted and the
beautiful alpine flora of the herbslows had just begun
to flower. Everywhere could be smelled the
characteristic scent of flowering orchids. Large
numbers of flies were already present, representing
many species of (most notably) muscids, anthomyiids
and scatophagids. We were not attacked by many
mosquitoes. Only one tachinid was found at this
locality: Petinarctia stylata (B. & B.) [Ed.: also
known as Periscepsia stylata] a circumpolar species
and a very widely distributed species in Greenland.
This fly turned out to be the most abundant, or at least
the most spectacular, insect on heaths at this and other
localities. Its host is unknown.
Later in our trip, from July 27th to August 5th, we
collected at Dronning Maries Dal. There we were
almost eaten alive by numerous mosquitoes, black flies
and biting midges. One further tachinid was found:
Peleteria aenea (Staeger), also known from Canada.
It is a rather common and widespread species in
Greenland. Females were found singly at altitudes of
300-400m, where they were apparently visiting
flowers of thyme. Males were found in the lowland
on small sandy patches where individuals were
observed to "take stations" and "fight" for each sandy
patch.
A total of 8 species of tachinids are known from
Greenland, based on the large collection of insects
from Greenland in the Zoologisk Museum
(Copenhagen). Not all the species have been
identified yet because specimens need to be compared
with those of Canadian species. Though most of these
species are believed rare, our collection of only two
species from SE Greenland was fewer than we
expected, even if one excludes from consideration the
exclusively high-arctic species. The number of species
of calliphorids (4) and butterflies (15) that we collected
was also lower than expected. However, we found as
many as 10 of a possible 13 species of syrphids. The
factors limiting species numbers at the two localities
we visited were apparently the high humidity (caused
by the large amount of melting water) and the absence
of ice-free high-alpine areas. The humid conditions
were perhaps better tolerated by Syrphidae.
An extraordinary case of multiparasitism in tachinid
flies (by R. Cortés)
While collecting all sorts of insects in the
mesquite (Prosopis spp.) forest (22,000 Hás.) in the
Pampa above Iquique (1,200 meters) close to the
border with Perú, entomologist D. Bobadilla
(Universidad de Tarapacá, Arica) was able to secure
two fully grown larvae of the noctuid Melipotis sp.,
one with 25 macrotype eggs of Euphorocera peruviana
Townsend (Exoristini) on its dorsum and the other
with no less than 148 eggs of the parasitoid. The first
host larva yielded two perfect adult tachinids of
normal size, where as the second understandably
yielded none at all. Both host larvae were protected,
for pupation, in crevices under bark of mesquite
(Prosopis tamarugo Philippi). Both examples were
collected in the forest in January 1992.
This extraordinary case of multiparasitism does
not seem to have been reported before, at least not in
the texts and literature available here. It evidently
reveals the inability of an ovipositing female of E.
peruviana to detect that a prospective host larva is
already parasitized and cannot possibly provide enough
food for such an overwhelming number of parasitic
eggs, ignoring the autocidal competition to survive that
148 eggs of the fly unavoidably would create.
An illustrated paper with photographs by D.
Bobadilla will be published soon, describing in detail
this unusual and aberrant case of multiparasitism in the
Tachinidae. Euphorocera Townsend (1912) is a
common genus in the Nearctic and Neotropical
Regions. [Ed.: Bobadilla's paper was published in
1992; see bibliography.] The Tachinid Times
Issue 6, February 1993
Page 3
Studies on tachinids attacking the European earwig
in cent