Tachinid Fly

Description:

This squat little Tachinid has a perfect orange-red heart on a black thorax, red eyes, patterned wings, a red abdomen, very long tarsi and a sparse amount of bristles on the body. It was about 8 mm in length. It belongs to the subfamily Phasiinae, a group that is principally parasitoid of the Hemiptera as larvae. Dr. James O’Hara, Research Scientist and Tachinid expert with the Canadian National Collection of Insects in Ottawa, Canada was kind enough to identify this fly, writing: "Your fly is indeed a phasiine tachinid. It is Phasia aurulans Meigen, 1824. This is the first Alaskan record I have seen of this species. However, I am not surprised that the species is in Ketchikan because I collected it myself not far away in Terrace, B.C. It is also known from the N.W.T. (but so far not from the Yukon)". So lucky me, I get the first Alaskan record!

Habitat:

Feeding on composite flowers in planters along the dock. Ketchikan, Alaska. I only saw it once.

Notes:

https://bugguide.net/node/view/328821 This article shows the species with a dark metallic abdomen. Mine was all red and not metallic, female? https://diptera.info/forum/viewthread.ph... thread_id=32183&highlight=Phasia+aurulans&pid=142744 Also shows a male with a dark abdomen. https://www.biolib.cz/en/image/id253585/... And this one from Slovakia has a red abdomen. http://www.nadsdiptera.org/Tach/AboutTac... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachinidae...