Eremoides bicristatus (Banks, 1924); or, Here be Dragons...

This was going to be a post about a fly (order Diptera, I mean), as I've rather neglected them. But as I doodled around, looking for a key to Afrotropical Promachus, I remembered something significantly more bizarre.

This:

Photographed in Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia in October 2011, using Olympus E-420 DSLR, Zuiko 40-150mm lens and 3 KOOD magnifiers. Note the bizarre little 'wings' projecting from its thorax.

I can't find the Chewa name for this delightful insect, so we'll just launch straight into what it is in English; this is an Owlfly, a family closely related to the Antlions, which you may remember from this post about Hagenomyia tristis.

One of the downsides to this truly awesome group of insects is that there isn't a great deal of information on them, particularly the African groups, online. The most comprehensive I found was the Lacewing Digital Library, from which I was able to glean which species were recorded in the region - one of which had a distinctly promising name, and one unreferenced image on Flickr seemed promising, but wasn't enough to go on.
It occurred to me today that I might have better luck with the Royal Museum for Central Africa's Illustrated Database of Neuroptera, which, in an ambitious and reasonably user-friendly project, does have a surprising number of images of types either hosted or linked to.

But it didn't have images of the species with such a promising name. All it had was the name, a list of museums where specimens are held (which would be useful if I had access to them) and the original citation.

That part is important. You see, although most (all?) prestigious journals require a subscription before their most recent articles can be viewed, a man called Banks submitted an article to the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparitive Zoology at Harvard College back in the 1920s, and, some time after they published it, it was made freely available, with the entire issue it was published in, on the Biodiversity Heritage Library [link].

With that realisation, it didn't take long to find the original description for that teasingly close name. And it fit. And there was a diagram of a particularly distinctive feature of the newly described genus Erophanes, and it was only a few more clicks to discover that Erophanes, under its new name of Eremoides (Erophanes was already taken) has only one species. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

Eremoides bicristatus

(Banks, 1924)

Same time, same place, but with Olympus E-420 and Zuiko 40-150mm lens and no magnifiers.

We'll call it the Two-Crested Owlfly for now, a literal attempt to translate that into Chewa as kawiri-matsumba kadzidzi-mbebe (lit. 'twice-crests owl-fly'), but I'm tempted to use Kadzidzi-Tombolombo instead, meaning owl-dragonfly, as mbebe, unlike the English 'fly', is not all that general, and refers quite specifically to the houseflies and similar insects.The owl-flies live - and look - more like the (quite unrelated) dragonflies, and so it seems a more sensible name.

All that aside, and onwards with the taxonomy:

- Ascalaphini     

- Ascalaphinae    

- Ascalaphidae     

- Myrmeleontoidea

See also Hagenomyia tristis.

- Myrmeleontiformia

- Neuroptera              

- Neuropterida            

- Endopterygota           

See also Dichtha inflata, Oedemera nobilis, Otiorhynchus atroapterus,Malachius bipustulatus , Phyllobius pomaceus, Cheilomenes lunata, Melolontha melolontha, Neojulodis vittipennis, Demetrias atricapillus, Anthia fornasinii, Lophyra cf. differens, Synagris proserpina, Vespula germanica, Astata tropicalis, Anthophora furcata, Andrena nigroaenea, Zebronia phenice, Crambus pascuella, Nemophora degeerella, Sphinx ligustri, Laelia robusta, Acada biseriata, Metisella willemi, Anthocharis cardamines, Papilio demodocus, Panorpa germanica, Chloromyia formosa, Senaspis haemorrhoa, Helophilus pendulus, Episyrphus balteatus, Metadon inermis, Diasemopsis meigenii, Dolichotachina caudata and Megistocera filipes.

- Eumetabola                  

See also Pephricus, Grypocoris stysi, Ranatra and Anoplocnemis curvipes. 

- Neoptera                        

See also Idolomantis dentifrons, Sibylla pretiosa, Tettigonia viridissima, Stictogryllacris punctata, Enyaliopsis, Humbe tenuicornis, Lobosceliana loboscelis, Cyathosternum prehensile, Heteropternis thoracica and Pseudothericles jallae.

- Metapterygota                 

See also Enallagma cyathigerum, Pseudagrion hageni, Lestinogomphus angustus and Rhyothemis semihyalina. 

- Pterygota                           

- Dicondylia                          

- Insecta                                 

- Hexapoda                             

- Arthropoda                            

See also Phrynarachne rugosa, Hyllus argyrotoxus, Enoplognatha ovata, Argiope bruennichi, Pardosa amentata, Alopecosa barbipes,  Dicranopalpus ramosus and Ligia oceanica.

- Ecdysozoa                               

- Protostomia                              

See also Burtoa nilotica.

- Nephrozoa                                  

See also Caprimulgus pectoralis, Tockus alboterminatus, Larus argentatus, Sterna hirundo, Burhinus vermiculatus, Troglodytes troglodytes, Megaceryle maxima, Ardea goliath, Chalcophaps indica, Stigmatopelia senegalensis, Lygodactylus capensis, Thelotornis capensis, Zootoca vivipara, Trachylepis varia, Trachylepis striata wahlbergi, Hipposideros vittatus, Syncerus caffer, Rana temporaria, Breviceps poweri, Chiromantis xerampelina and Synchiropus splendidus. 

- Bilateralia                                     

- Eumetazoa                                     

- Animalia                                          

- Eukaryota                                         

And here's a rather shoddier picture of a female, just to be leaving you with:

 

And that's all, folks!







Two sites were of particular value in the identification of this species - first, the Lacewing Digital Library, from where I deduced the species with appropriate ranges, and then the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which allows free access to an astounding number of back-issues of major journals. But is currently hiccuping. Which may just be my computer.

Hagenomyia tristis (Walker, 1853)

We'll not mention St. George and the Gecko... er, Dragon (Context: Yesterday, 23/04, was the day of England's Patron Saint, George, whose primary claim to fame is slaying a dragon. Recognising that tales of a fire breathing dragon are likely exaggerated from accounts of a more-or-less bog-standard reptile, a friend and I theorized that in fact, as opposed to the typical conclusion that the dragon was one of the not-unheard-of historic crocodiles-that-crossed-the-mediterranean-in-search-of-the-promised-land, the dragon was an inch-long gecko that terrorized early christian villagers by licking its eyeballs at them).

Instead, today, we're going to explore the fourth major Superorder of the Endopterygota. We've introduced - elsewhere - wasps and co. (Hymenopterida), beetles and pals (Coleopterida) and flies et al. (including moths, scorpionflies and caddisflies, Panorpida). Any guesses as to whom the fourth group could comprise?

No?

Ah, well, you'll find out soon enough. Once more into the taxonomy!

We've already established that we're looking in Eukaryota-Animalia-Eumetazoa-Bilateralia-Nephrozoa-Protostomia-Ecdysozoa-Arthropoda-Hexapoda-Insecta-Dicondylia-Pterygota-Metapterygota-Neoptera-Eumetabola and Endopterygota. 

So where to go from here?

Neuropterida, the superorder dominated by (and named for) the
  Neuroptera, or lacewings. These are best known as small, pearly-green insects that flutter out of the grass around dusk in late summer, with species such as the (species complex) Chrysoperla carnea. We're going to leave them, and their suborder of Hemerobiiformia behind, and instead jump into the:
    Myrmeleontiformia,
      Myrmeleontoidea and the
        Myrmeleontidae, the family most often referred to as the ant-lions. As a suborder, they are fairly universally distributed, but in Northern Europe, they are scarce to - over most of the UK - entirely absent.
          Myrmelontinae
            Mymeliontini and, taking a rare dive into the mysterious world of sub-tribes,
              Myrmeleontina, where we find our genus and, within, the species:

Hagenomyia tristis

(Walker, 1853)

So let's meet it: 

This lovely creature is also known as the Gregarious Antlion, largely because you very rarely see one on its own, but instead, walking through a drift of thick-leaved grasses in lightly shaded woodland, you'll disturb hundreds at once. This one and its companions seen in an orchard in Chongwe, Lusaka, Zambia, in February 2013. 

As with most of their relatives, the young are subterranean predators with large jaws and mouthparts well designed for sucking the juice out of any insect small and unfortunate enough to be caught in their jaws. Adults of this family, despite their generally weak flight, are typically also predatory, with chewing mouthparts. 

It is important to note that scale is everything here - they may be terrifying monsters to an unsuspecting mosquito or aphid, but to human beings they are completely harmless. 

To put the above image in full body context, here's a more inclusive shot: 

Images captured February 2013, in Chongwe Distr., Lusaka, Zambia, using an Olympus E-420, and all editing, cropping etc. done using GIMP 2.