Palpada flavoscutellata

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Description
Nomenclature and Literature
Data Records

Habits: Unknown, but presumably like other Palpada, flavoscutellata visits flowers for food and to find mates and the immatures are rat-tailed maggots in some aquatic niche.

Taxonomy: Palpada flavoscutellata is closely related phylogenetically and phenotypically to mexicana (Macquart 1847) and geniculata (Fabricius 1805). These species differ from other Palpada by having no distinct pollinose pattern on the mesonotum, orange scutellum with pale pile and dark femora. Palpada flavoscutellata differs from the other two by having distinct brown wing macula and extensive bare wings. Palpada geniculata has the wing densely microtrichose and diffusely brown; mexicana has an extensively bare wing like flavoscutellata but that wing is only obscurely brownish apicomedially. Palpada flavoscutellata is known only from a dozen or so specimens in the USNM, but undoubtedly many remain unidentified in various collections. Surprisingly, none have been found among more than 8,000 syrphids collected by INBio parataxonomists over the last few years in Costa Rica!