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Cheilosia ranunculi Doczkal, 2000

Identification

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

Synonymy

This species and C. albitarsis were separated by Doczkal (2000)2.

Biology

There is currently very little information on the biology of this species. The larva is unknown, although it is probablt associated with buttercups Ranunculus like its close relative, C. albitarsis. Adults are usually found visiting buttercup flowes.

Flight period

The following plots show the number of unique records per week excluding those reported to be of immature stages. Phenology plots for Cheilosia ranunculi

Distribution

This is a southern species that mainly occurs south of the Tees and seems to be scarce in northern England. It was added to the Scottish list by Rotheray & Wilkinson (2010)3 who listed some old records from as far north as Edinburgh based on re-examination of specimens in the collections of the National Museum of Scotland. Distribution map for Cheilosia ranunculi

Trends

The following plots show the Frescalo TFactor vs year and a map of the rescaled frequency (all records) for the species.Trend plots for Cheilosia ranunculi

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

  2. Doczkal, D. (2000). Description of Cheilosia ranunculi spec. nov. from Europe, a sibling species of C. albitarsis Meigen (Diptera, Syrphidae). Volucella, 5, 63–78. ↩

  3. Wilkinson, G. (2010). Cheilosia psilophthalma Becker and Brachypalpus laphriformis (Fallén) (Diptera, Syrphidae) new to Scotland. Dipterists Digest (Second Series), 17, 165–167. ↩