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Dear all,

I must appologize for the quality of the picture attached (sent by a correspondant) but the question is related to the possible other flys that look like this one and can be confused with it.



The only reference document I own is the a french field guide on diptera :

Guide des Mouches et des moustiques
L'identification des esp?ces europ?ennes
Joakim et Hiroko Haupt
Delachaux et Niestl?
ISBN 2-603-01175-8

In this book, the only fly which looks like the photo is : Pogonosoma maroccanum
But it is told that this asilidae is located in turkey and north of africa. As it was photographied in "Saone et Loire", far from south.

Another report on this fly has been made in france recently (by the mean of a photo) in south of france (Grace).
It is present in Fauna Italia, http://www.faunai...lidae.html so could explain its presence in south of france.

Is there a risk of confusion with another local (french) species ?

Looking forward reading you soon.

Didier.

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I saw that Fritz Geller-Grimm has an image of this species in his database. The images in the database are not online but you can request images. You can contact him at . Maybe you can point him to this forum and ask him to post the image so we can all compare. From what I could gather, there is little doubt to your identification, but I will hardly call myself a specialist in Asilidae.

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Dear all,
I contacted Fritz Geller-Grimm (as invited by Paul) and he kindly answered to me the following :

...
Yes, you are right, the image shows a specimen of Pogonosoma maroccanum.
There are some other species in the western part of the palaearctic region,
but none of them have yellow tibiae. Seguy (1927) cited several localities
in France. The species is common in Southern Europe.
If you are interested in additional references, please use the question
form on my webpage: http://www.geller-grimm.de/asilidae.htm [follow
database - literature].

I hope that this information is enough at the moment, if not, please
contact me again,

Yours sincerely
Fritz Geller-Grimm

Best regards.
Didier.