Cheilosia ( Cheilosia ) cynocephala Loew, 1840

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 : 54-55

Cheilosia ( Cheilosia) cynocephala Loew, 1840

Fig. 26

Chilosia cynocephala Loew, 1840: 32 .

Differential diagnosis

Cheilosia cynocephala is especially similar to C. confusa sp. nov. and C. vernalis . It has a blue body shine; in contrast, in C. confusa and C. vernalis the body shine is black or brown. Usually, the female of C. cynocephala has faint, blackish cloud in the wing (but this characteristics is missing in the only Caucasian studied specimen), missing in the other two species. Another character to exclude C. confusa is the predominantly black pile on the scutum (predominantly yellow pilose in C. confusa ). Other characters to exclude C. vernalis are: parafacia wide and pruinose in C. cynocephala (narrower and shiny in C. vernalis ), scutum covered largely with black pile (in C. vernalis pile varying from yellow to black) and tarsus of mesoleg black (in C. vernalis often basal two tarsomeres orange).

Material examined

GEORGIA – Samtskhe-Javakheti • 1 ♀; Borjomi ; 41.838 ° N, 43.337 ° E; 910 m a.s.l.; 2 Sep. 2019; J. Mortelmans leg.; FMT .

Genetics

All DNA barcodes of C. cynocephala (from Finland and Spain; see Ballester-Torres et al. 2024) are recovered together with low support value (BS<90%).

Remarks

Reported from the Caucasus for the first time.

Distribution

Europe, Western Siberia and Caucasus ( Georgia).