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Cheilosia fraterna (Meigen, 1830)

Identification

Identification difficulty = 3. microscope_icon camera_icon_question according to Ball & Morris, 20241

Synonymy

The specimen described as Cheilosia species C of Stubbs & Falk (1983)2, seems to be a particularly small individual from the second generation of this species (Falk quoted in Stubbs, 19963).

Biology

The larva tunnels the stems and basal rosettes of Marsh Thistle Cirsium palustre. Adults are often seen visiting flowers such as buttercups Ranunculus sp. in marshy places and damp meadows. According to Speight (2017)4 this is a woodland species found in clearings, often along streams or rivers with tall herb communities.

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

Distribution

Although widely distributed and frequent, this species seems to be more abundant in the north and west. It is also considerably less common in the East Midlands. 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. Stubbs, A., & Falk, S. (1983). British Hoverflies: An Illustrated Identification Guide (1st ed.). Reading: BENHS. ↩

  3. Stubbs, A. (1996). British Hoverflies. Second (revised and enlarged) supplement. Reading: BENHS. ↩

  4. Speight, M. (2017). Species accounts of European Syrphidae ( No. 97). yrph the Net, the database of European Syrphidae (Diptera) (p. 294). Dublin: Syrph the Net publications. Retrieved from https://pollinators.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/StN-2017-Species-Accounts.pdf ↩