Syrphus rectus Osten Sacken, 1875

Identification

Identification difficulty = 4. according to Ball & Morris, 2024¹

Synonymy

Specimens were found in Ireland that appear to correspond to the North American Syrphus rectus and it was added to the British list by Speight (1999)². Males are indistinguishable from S. vitripennis. Females are superficially similar to S. ribesii although the distribution of microtrichia on the wing is like that of S. vitripennis. Whilst there is no reason to doubt that S. rectus is a good American species, there is considerable scepticism about its occurrence in Europe and a feeling this is merely a pale-legged colour form of female S. vitripennis.

Biology

The handful of European records give no indication of any specific habitat.

Flight period

The following plots show the number of unique records per week that were not reported to be of eggs, larvae or pupae.

Distribution

S. rectus is recorded widely in North America. In Great Britain, a single female with almost completely tellow hind tibia, but with the microtrichial pattern of S. vitripennis on the wings was reared by Colin Plant from Bishops Stortford in June 1987 (Plant, 1991)³ and there have subsequently been a few, similar females found in widely scattered localities.