Hi – I have noticed a certain shortage of people working on muscoid [edit: really, calyptrate] flies apart from the recent Lucilia identification effort. I’ve decided to try sorting my own observations into families. This has not proved terribly easy – I am having trouble matching up my photos with anatomy diagrams (even my clearest side-view photos leave me mumbling “um, I think that is the mesopleuron”).
Fly people, what resources would you recommend for learning fly anatomy? What helped you when you were new to it? And what is your favorite key to families?
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You may already know about two helpful resources: The Dankowiczs’ Field/Photo ID page ( https://sites.google.com/view/flyguide/guide-to-families/calyptratae ) and the Manual of Nearctic Diptera ( https://esc-sec.ca/publications/aafc/ ). Figs. 2.65-2.66 in the MND is the standard calyptrate anatomy figure.
The main problem for iNaturalist is that some key diagnostic features, like the bristles on the side of the fly, rarely show up clearly in photos, and even wing vein characters are not always visible. Some families (Muscidae, Tachinidae) are extremely variable in shape and coloration. I still have trouble telling apart some similar kinds in different families. Like the flyguide says, sometimes you just need to become familiar with individual genera or groups.
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