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Lejogaster tarsata (Megerle in Meigen, 1822)

Identification

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

Synonymy

Lejogaster splendida (Meigen) in Stubbs & Falk (1983)2.

Biology

The larva is aquatic and has been found among floating, decaying vegetation in a pond. Adults are most often found in or near coastal marshes, for example at the fringes of mildly brackish ditches, or in the transition zone between fresh and saline water in coastal flushes. They visit flowers, especially white umbels and Ranunculus.

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. Notable - Falk, 19914.

Distribution

Although this is mainly a coastal species in Britain there are confirmed inland records, but confusion with L. metallina makes the distribution difficult to assess. It appears to be a scarce species generally, but can be abundant at some localities. 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. 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. ↩