Taxonomy
Melangyna umbellatarum
Distribution
Species Biology
Preferred environment
Forest/wetland; forest streams with Salix; Salix carr; beside streams and rivers fringed by Salix. In Ireland this species occurs in association with wet woodland and scrub of Salix, at the edge of raised bog and fen or along streams with some scrub of Salix. Essentially it is usually found where tall wetland umbellifers occur, on which its aphid-feeding larvae are known to develop. In continental Europe it may be found in much less humid conditions and presumably uses there a wider range of aphids.
Adult habitat & habits
Flies from 1 - 5m above ground, around shrubs and bushes; males hover over paths etc., at 2 - 5m. to a significant extent arboreal, rarely settling on low-growing plants except when visiting flowers.
Flight period
May/September, with peaks in June and August. Larva: described and figured by Dusek & Laska (1967); aphid feeding. Figured in colour and separated from larvae of some other Melangyna species in the keys of Rotheray (1994). The larvae have been found on large umbellifers, Rumex and Betula (Bagachanova, 1990). Egg: Chandler (1968). The morphology of the chorion of the egg is figured by Kuznetzov (1988).
Flowers visited
White umbellifers and Foeniculum; Euphorbia, Filipendula ulmaria, Sorbus.
Irish reference specimens
In the collections of NMI and UM
Determination
Speight (1988a), Bartsch et al (2009a). The male terminalia are figured by Hippa (1978). The adult insect is illustrated in colour by Kormann (1988), Stubbs and Falk (1983), Torp (1984, 1994), van der Goot (1986) and Bartsch et al (2009a). The male of this species is extremely difficult to separate from M. ericarum (Coll.). But, as explicitly stated by Collin (1946), in his description of M. ericarum, the female of that species is easily distinguished from the female of M. umbellatarum by the fact that the pale marks on abdominal tergite 2 reach the base of the tergite in M. umbellatarum, while they are widely set back from it in M. ericarum. Assuming Collin's (l.c.) interpretation of M. umbellatarum is correct (and there is no evidence that he examined the type material of the species), the N American species which is referred to by this name in Vockeroth (1992) cannot be M.umbellatarum, but is more likely to prove con-specific with M. ericarum. If M. umbellatarum does occur in N America, it would seem to be the species at present known there as M.fisherii (Walton).
Distribution
World distribution(GBIF)
Fennoscandia south to Iberia; from Ireland eastwards through northern, central and southern Europe (Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Roumania, Bulgaria) into European parts of Russia; through mountainous parts of Siberia to Kamchatka; in N America from Alaska to Arizona.
Irish distribution
Recorded as occurring in Ireland in Coe (1953). Although most Irish records of this species are from the midlands, there are scattered records from most parts of the island except for the south-east. M. umbellatarum is not a frequent species here, but neither does it appear to be threatened. The same could be said of this insect over much of its European range. It also ranges widely beyond Europe, across Siberia to the Pacific.
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.