Amenia leonina (Fabricius, 1775)

Colless, D. H., 1998, Morphometrics in the genus Amenia and revisionary notes on the Australian Ameniinae (Diptera: Calliphoridae), with the description of eight new species, Records of the Australian Museum 50 (1), pp. 85-123 : 110

Amenia leonina group

This group comprises the two taxa treated by Crosskey (1965) as subspecies of A. leonina : A. l. leonina and A. 1. albomaculata . As discussed in Part 1, the two are to a large extent allopatric, but with some significant occurrences of each within the range of the other. Males are morphometrically distinct on the basis of relative head width, which correlates with the other characters used in the key above, but in southeastern Queensland, in the general vicinity ofBrisbane, intermediate specimens occur, suggesting some degree of introgression of genotypes. However, this could be the result of ecological disturbance, and specimens of A. albomaculata from Mackay and of A. leonina from Sydney, suggest that introgression is not general. For that reason, specific status seems to me most suitable, and I am restoring the taxa on that basis.

Members of the group can be identified by the characters given in the key. They can be recognised with the naked eye by the large size, the metallic blue or greenish-blue body colour, the conspicuous pair of prescutal dorsocentral pale stripes, and the pale lateral spots of abdominal T3 not extending on to the dorsum. The rather similar A. longicornis is usually smaller, purplish-black in colour, and the lateral pale spots on T3 clearly extend on to the dorsum. As in the imperialis group, the male terminalia show no attributes useful for identifying the group or its individual species.

Crosskey's (1965) detailed descriptions hold fairly well, and I deal below mainly with additional differences that have appeared in the more abundant material now available. The curious geographic distributions displayed in this group are discussed in Part 3 (Zoogeography and Evolution).