Taxonomy
Platycheirus manicatus
Distribution
Species Biology
Preferred environment
Wetland/open ground; fen, humid, unimproved grassland, unimproved montane and alpine grassland (to above 2000m in the Alps); beside streams and rivers in open country (including moorland) and taiga. In Ireland P. manicatus is characteristically a humid grassland insect, occurring both where the ground is subject to shallow flooding and where it is not subject to flooding. Unimproved, or marginally improved (i.e. subject to occasional fertiliser addition) grassland used for extensive grazing or for hay-making suit this insect well and it has been very frequent and widespread here. However, a switch to silage production provides less favourable circumstances for this insect, because silage harvesting involves an increased risk that its larvae will be harvested along with the vegetation and removed from the site with it (within the silage bales). This drain on P. manicatus populations, together with the general trend towards intensification of use of grassland, would be sufficient to explain the increasing scarcity of P. manicatus. This syrphid can no longer be regarded as characteristic of the farmland landscape of green fields and hedges, because of such changes in land use. Today it survives in farmland along wet ditches and in undrained, largely unused patches within the farm infrastructure. In more natural habitats, P. manicatus occurs around the periphery of fens or raised bogs, and along streams in blanket bog or moor etc. In continental Europe, P. manicatus is associated with humid, unimproved grassland up to and including subalpine altitudes.
Adult habitat & habits
Along brooks, by flushes and in open pasture and meadow; flies low, among and over ground vegetation.
Flight period
May/September, with peaks in June and August. Larva: described and figured by Goeldlin (1974); aphid feeding, on low-growing plants and bushes.
Flowers visited
White umbellifers; Allium schoenoprasum, Caltha, Campanula rapunculoides, Cardamine, Chrysanthemum, Cirsium, Filipendula, Glechoma hederacea, Leontodon, Origanum, Ranunculus, Rosa rugosa, Senecio, Stellaria, Succisa,Taraxacum, Veronica.
Irish reference specimens
In the collections of NMI and UM
Determination
Dusek & Laska (1982), van Veen (2004), Haarto and Kerppola (2007a), Bartsch et al (2009a). The adult insect is illustrated in colour by Stubbs and Falk (1983), Torp (1994) and Bartsch et al (2009a).
Distribution
World distribution(GBIF)
From Iceland, the Faroes (Jensen, 2001) and Fennoscandia south to Iberia, the Mediterranean and N Africa; from Ireland eastwards through most of Europe into Turkey and European parts of Russia; in Siberia from the Urals to the Altai; Alaska in N America; Greenland. Away from the Atlantic seaboard, P. manicatus is primarily an insect of northern Europe, the Alps, the Pyrenees and other mountainous parts of the continent. It also ranges widely through Siberia and reaches the Nearctic in Alaska.
Irish distribution
Recorded as occurring in Ireland in Coe (1953). P. manicatus is generally distributed in Ireland, but in farmland the species is usually encountered today in small numbers, rather than as large populations.
Temporal change
Records submitted to Data Centre in 2024
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References
Publications
Speight, M. C. D. (2008) Database of Irish Syrphidae
(Diptera). Irish Wildlife Manuals, No. 36. National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Dublin, Ireland.
Speight, M.C.D. (2014) Species accounts of European
Syrphidae (Diptera), 2014. Syrph the Net, the database of European Syrphidae,
vol. 78, 321 pp., Syrph the Net publications, Dublin.