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Melanogaster hirtella (Loew, 1843)

Identification

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

Synonymy

Chrysogaster hirtella (Loew) in Stubbs & Falk (1983)2.

Biology

The larva is aquatic, inhabiting mud adjacent to emergent plants such as Greater Reedmace Typha latifolia and Reed Sweet Grass Glyceria maxima, but especially favouring Marsh Marrigold Caltha palustris, usually at the edges of running water. It has modified hind spiracles which are used to gain access to the air spaces in the submerged parts of emergent plants. Found in marshes or near the margins of running water where there is lush emergent vegetation. Adults are usually swept from waterside vegetation or found visiting flowers, especially white umbels, and buttercups Ranunculus sp.

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

Widespread and common but apparently far less abundant east of the Pennines. This would conform to the analysis by Speight (2017)3 who reports this as an Atlantic seaboard species which is quite scarce in central and southern Europe. 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. 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 ↩