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Sericomyia superbiens (Müller, 1776)

Identification

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

Synonymy

Arctophila fulva (Harris, 1780) in Stubbs & Falk (1983)2, A. mussitans (Fabricius, 1775). Arctophila superbiens in Stubbs & Falk (2002)3.

Biology

The larva remains undescribed, but is thought to be aquatic or semi-aquatic. Stubbs & Falk (1983)2 report an observation of a female ovipositing in a water filled hoof print in a shaded muddy path beside a stream. Found near springs, wet flushes or streams, usually near the edge of woodland or carr. Adults are commonest in late summer and visit purple flowers, especially Devil's-bit Scabious Succisa, white umbels and yellow composites.

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

This is primarily a northern and western species but there is an outlying population in East Anglia, especially Norfolk where it is part of an assemblage of otherwise northerly species. 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. Stubbs, A., & Falk, S. (2002). British Hoverflies An Illustrated Identification Guide (2nd ed.). Reading: BENHS. ↩