Taxon classification Animalia Diptera Calliphoridae

Chrysomya albiceps (Wiedemann, 1819) Figs 2G, 3D

Material examined.

Porto Santo: Ilhéu do Farol S (1 female).

Remarks.

Chrysomya albiceps can be found from the southern Palaearctic Region (southern Europe, Arabia, India) through to Africa (Zumpt 1965) and the Americas, where since its introduction it has rapidly expanded north ( Guimarães et al. 1978, Baumgartner and Greenberg 1984). In Europe it is very abundant in the Iberian Peninsula ( Martínez-Sánchez et al. 2002, Prado e Castro et al. 2012) and is expanding towards central Europe, having reached France, Switzerland and Austria (Grassberger et al. 2003), the Ukraine (Verves 2004) and Poland, from where its current northernmost records are known (Szpila et al. 2008, Michalski and Szpila in press). Our record from Ilhéu do Farol is the first for Porto Santo. Chrysomya albiceps normally breeds in carrion; newly-hatched first instar larvae feed on exudations of decomposing flesh, but the second and third larval stages are facultative predators, feeding also on the larvae of other blowfly species (Zumpt 1965).