Previous Next

Cheilosia chrysocoma (Meigen, 1822)

Identification

Identification difficulty = 3. eyeball_icon camera_filled_icon according to Ball & Morris, 20241

Biology

The larva of this species remains unknown, but egg laying has been observed on Wild Angelica Angelica sylvestris in Europe (Doczkal, 1996)2. Adults are typically found sitting on paths, sunning on vegetation or occasionally at flowers such as sallows Salix sp. catkins, in woodland rides, glades or edges. There are indications that calcareous marshy areas are preferred but records are not exclusively from such habitats.

Flight period

The following plots show the number of unique records per week that were not reported to be of eggs, larvae or pupae. phenology

Status

Lower risk (Nationally scarce) - Ball & Morris, 20143. Rare (RDB3) - Falk, 19914.

Distribution

There are several obvious hot spots for this species, including parts of Oxfordshire, the limestone west and north of Peterborough, the Welsh borders and scattered localities in north and south Wales. There is also a hotspot in south Cumbria. In Scotland records are widely dispersed and form no obvious pattern. dotmap

Trends

The following plots show the Frescalo TFactor vs year and a map of the rescaled frequency (all records) for the species. For an explanation see here. trend

  1. Ball, S., & Morris, R. (2024). Hoverflies of Britain and Ireland. WILDGuides (3rd ed.). Oxford: Princeton University Press. ↩

  2. Doczkal, D. (1996). Observations on host plants and behaviour of egg-laying females of Cheilosia Meigen (Diptera, Syrphidae) in Central Europe. Volucella, 2, 77–85. ↩

  3. Ball, S., & Morris, R. (2014). A review of the scarce and threatened flies of Great Britain. Part 6: Syrphidae. ( No. 9). Species status (pp. 1–130). Peterborough: JNCC. ↩

  4. Falk, S. (1991). A review of the scarce and threatened flies of Great Britain. ( No. 39). Research and Survey in Nature Conservation (pp. 1–194). Peterborough: NCC. ↩