Amenia sexpunctata Malloch, 1933

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 : 111

Amenia sexpunctata Malloch

The currently known range of this species ( Fig. 10 ) extends from the general vicinity of Darwin, through Arnhem Land (including the Cobourg Peninsula) and the McArthur River coast, to Cape York Peninsula (vicinity of Weipa and Iron Range). Crosskey doubted its occurrence in North Queensland, due to Paramonov's (1957) somewhatmisleading description of a specimen that had the (eye) "facets very enlarged". This is in fact true of all males of the species, in that facet size gradually increases from the ventral and posterior margins to the forward-looking area nearthe middle of the frons; the latter facets are about three times as broad as the former. However, this hardly differs from the general condition in ameniines, in which the increase is about two times-a figure, moreover, that seems to correlate roughly with size. Amenia sexpunctata is one of the largest of the ameniines. Its size, plus its very dark colour and the paired pale spots on abdominal T3, T4, and T5 make it easily recognisable with the naked eye.

Figures

Figure 10. Distributions of Amenia chrysame (circles), Amenia nigromaculata (triangles), and Amenia sexpunctata (squares) (overlapping records omitted).