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Platycheirus granditarsus (Forster, 1771)

Identification

Identification difficulty = 1. eyeball_icon camera_filled_icon according to Ball & Morris, 20241

Synonymy

Pyrophaena granditarsa (Forster, 1771) om Stubbs & Falk (1983)2.

Biology

Larva undescribed. Pupae have been found in wetland flood litter. It occurs in wet meadows and in the lush vegetation fringing marshes, pond, lakes, etc including more acid habitats such as poor-fen and Purple Moorgrass Molinia caerulea grassland. Adults fly amongst stands of tall vegetation such as rushes Juncus sp. and Common Reed Phragmites australis and frequently settle on the stems. They visit a wide range of flowers, especially buttercups Ranunculus sp., and males can be found hovering over open areas such as paths.

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 seemingly much less regularly encountered in eastern England, especially in Lincolnshire and 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. ↩