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Neoascia tenur (Harris, 1780)

Identification

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

Synonymy

Neoascia dispar (Meigen, 1822) in Coe(1953)2 and Kloet & Hincks (1976)3.

Biology

The larva has been found at about the level of the water surface within the stem sheaths of dead Reedmace Typha sp. in a slow flowing stream. As an adult, this is probably the most frequently encountered member of the genus, occurring in lush vegetation around the margins of all types of water body, especially where beds of emergent plants such as Reed Sweet Grass Glyceria maxima, Greater Reedmace Typha latifolia or Common Reed Phragmites australis are present. Adults are most often found by sweeping such vegetation, but will visit a wide range of flowers.

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 in wetlands throughout Britain, and often extremely abundant in suitable habitat. Generally less well recorded from upland areas, suggesting that any increase in occurrence may be a result of additional recorder effort. 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. Coe, R. (1953). Diptera: Syrphidae. Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects, 10(1), 1–98. ↩

  3. Kloet, G., & Hinks, W. (1976). A check list of British insects. 2nd Ed. Part 5: Diptera and Siphonaptera. Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects, 11, 1–139. ↩