Cheilosia ( Convocheila ) cumanica Szilády, 1938

Bot, Sander, Mengual, Ximo, Meutter, Frank Van de & Skevington, Jeffrey H., 2025, Review of the genus Cheilosia Meigen, 1822 (Diptera: Syrphidae) from the Caucasus, with the description of 14 new species, European Journal of Taxonomy 1023, pp. 1-181 : 53-54

Cheilosia ( Convocheila) cumanica Szilády, 1938

Fig. 25

Cheilosia cumanica Szilády, 1938: 143 .

Cheilosia verae Stackelberg, 1968: 229 . Syn. with Cheilosia cumanica by Brădescu (1991).

Cheilosia verae – Stackelberg & Richter 1968: 249. — Stackelberg 1970: 62. — Peck 1988: 119. — Barkalov 1993: 712. — Barkalov & Mutin 2018: 484.

Cheilosia verae Stackelberg, 1956 [sic] – Gujabidze 2002: 246.

Cheilosia cumanica – Mengual et al. 2020: 22.

Differential diagnosis

Cheilosia cumanica belongs to the subgenus Convocheila Barkalov, 2002 . One of the distinctive characters of the subgenus is the pilosity on the face: long pilose along paraface in dorsal one third of face. In the males of Convocheila the ventral lobe of the postgonite is sickle-shaped. Within the Caucasus, the only other member of the subgenus Convocheila is C. laticornis , and the male of C. cumanica can be easily distinguished from C. laticornis by the pilose eye (bare in C. laticornis ), the female has few long black pile on the occiput, besides long yellow pile (with only long yellow pile in C. laticornis ) and scutellum on posterior margin with robust black setae (with weak, yellow setae in C. laticornis ). The male genitalia of C. cumanica are figured in Radenković et al. (2020).

Material examined

Collected in 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023; see Mengual et al. (2020) for detailed records from 2018.

Genetics

All DNA barcodes of C. cumanica are recovered together with high support value (BS = 100%).

Remarks

In the Caucasus, this taxon is often reported under the name C. verae , but Brădescu (1991) synonymized C. verae under C. cumanica . Our genetic results (Supp. file 1: Fig. S1) support this synonymy as specimens from the Caucasus cluster together with specimens from Serbia.

Biology

During our expeditions, collected between 2 May and 19 July at an altitude between 625 and 2700 m a.s.l. Most common on alpine meadows where it feeds on the flowers of herbaceous plants.

Distribution

Balkan Peninsula, Carpathian Mountains, Iran, and Caucasus ( Armenia, Georgia, Russia).