Eastern Band-Winged Hoverfly - Hypocritanus fascipennis
Alright, one more new Hoverfly to showcase, and then back to exploring the other insect orders next week! Up until 2020 (please refer to this article), this specie was originally classified under the genus: Ocyptamus. It has since been folded in to the Hypocritanus genus as a means to reduce restrictions with recent comparative evolutionary genetic analyses in mind. As new discoveries are found in the insect world, changes in nomenclature (naming) happen to better organize and understand them and their lineage. The specie name hasn’t changed, which should help to reduce some of the confusion. To identify this Fly, I bounced back and forth between species, eventually settling between H. lemur and H. fascipennis. I settled on the latter due to the wide, darkened band on the wings that resemble a chunky “Y”. It seems to be distinct. Compared to the other Hoverflies we’ve examined prior, this one definitely stands out as strange looking due to that elongated and thin abdomen that can flexibly curve. This specie seems to be part of another branch of Hoverfly that takes a different approach to mimicry. Most Hoverflies discussed before have a morphology that is recognizable by us as Flies while simultaneously trying to mimic other insects such as Bees, but this one is clearly different, even if it has a few stripes.
Even the smallest Hoverflies on this blog such as the Eastern Calligrapher or the Common Oblique Hoverfly have Bee-like striping and proportions, but it would be hard to mistaken this individual for a Bee. From what I’ve been able to read through, this Fly and its relatives have been described as “Dragonfly-mimics”, and after the first, second, and what seems like the 50th glance, this insect has elements that resemble a miniaturized Dragonfly. With its ability to hover, control its flight precisely, and zip around suddenly, it may be an effective mimic. Both Flies and Dragonflies have large, head-spanning eyes as well, so maybe some creatures would be fooled by this guise and its behavior. I doubt that would stop other Dragonflies (particularly the larger ones) from hunting these Flies, boosting into them and seizing them with their mighty spined legs and sharp mandibles! Looking at it myself, while there is a passing resemblance to Dragonflies, maybe this slimmed down form is meant to evoke the shape of Ichneumonids. There are many small, parasitic Ichneumonids that match this shape, and predators generally leave them alone, but without a stinger, this fly is in trouble if it gets caught. Hopefully it is effective enough a mimic of either insect to obtain delicious nectar from the flowers that it visits (differently shaped or not, it’s still a flower-loving Hoverfly).
Pictures were taken on September 11, 2018 with a Samsung Galaxy S4. If you’re interested in the behind the scenes of insect phylogeny, I do recommend that you read New generic concepts for orphaned lineages formerly treated as part of the genus Ocyptamus Macquart, 1834 (Diptera, Syrphidae) by Miranda G., et al for more information.
