1 Topic by kitenet

  • kitenet
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  • From: Buckinghamshire
  • Registered: 11-05-2006
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Topic: Cheilosia barbata

Having found this species recently I've been checking the NBN maps, and I think there is an incorrect synonymy. Cheilosia barbata is shown as being synonymous with C. honesta here:
https://data.nbn.org.uk/Taxa/NBNSYS0000006975

However, in the recent review of hoverfly statuses (Ball and Morris 2014) it says:
"The map in Ball et al. 2011 incorrectly shows the distribution extending into northern England and Scotland. This was due to confusion of synonymy over records of 'Cheilosia honesta' from old literature sources. These should have been attributes to C. lasiopa, not to this species."

The NBN map for C. barbata similarly shows it extending into Scotland, and I think is the result of this misapplied synonym. Presumably C. honesta should be linked to C. lasiopa instead, although what effect this will have on all the records of "barbata" in different systems I'm not sure - is there a procedure for alerting data managers to this sort of thing?

Martin Harvey
Biological Records Centre
CEH Wallingford

kitenet's Website

2 Reply by ChrisR

  • ChrisR
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  • Registered: 27-08-2011
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Re: Cheilosia barbata

Hi Martin

It seems a bit more complicated than that and I think the real problem is that there are 2x "honesta" and people have probably been chosing the wrong one. To quote Chandler:

barbata Loew, 1857
= honesta Rondani, 1868 Syn. by Claussen & Thompson (1996)

lasiopa Kowarz, 1885
= honesta: Verrall, 1901 (Chilosia), misident. Corrected by Claussen & Thompson (1996)

The UKSI matches this arrangement so it would be interesting to chat with Graham French and see which "honesta" records have been attributed to. It could be that they need to be moved from "Rondani, 1868" to "Verrall, 1901 misident". Do you want to query that with Graham and get back to me if I do need to change anything at my end? :)

Chris R.

Chris Raper, Manager of the UK Species Inventory, Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity,
Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD.  (tel: 020 7942 5894)
also Tachinid Recording Scheme (http://tachinidae.org.uk/)