Taxonomy
Cheilosia pagana
Distribution
Species Biology
Preferred environment
Forest/open ground; open areas in coniferous and deciduous forest and humid, unimproved grassland; somewhat anthropochorous, occurring also along hedgerows in farmland and at roadsides. This is a species of unimproved, humid grassland and open areas in various sorts of deciduous forest. There are no obvious differences between the general ecology of this species in Ireland and elsewhere. Use of such a widespread and common umbel as Anthriscus as a larval foodplant makes C. pagana an almost ubiquitous countryside hedgerow insect here. Further, emergence trap results strongly suggest C. pagana also uses both Heracleum and Angelica as larval host-plants. Use of these plants as larval food would be consistent with the widespread occurrence of C. pagana in the standard farmland landscape of green fields and hedges. Altogether, C. pagana can be regarded as a significantly anthropophilic insect.
Adult habitat & habits
Clearings and tracksides in woodland, scrub and carr; fen meadow; along hedgerows and beside streams; adults fly up to 2m, with hovering males up to 4 or 5m; settle on foliage of bushes and low-growing plants.
Flight period
May/June and July/September. In southern Europe, on the wing from mid March. undescribed, but has been reared from rotting roots of Anthriscus sylvestris (Stubbs, 1980) and Angelica sylvestris (Doczkal, 1996b). This species has also been collected repeatedly, by emergence traps installed over clumps of Heracleum and other emergence traps installed over clumps of Angelica (MS),suggesting that both of these large umbellifers can support the larvae of C. pagana. The morphology of the chorion of the egg is figured by Kuznetzov (1988).
Flowers visited
Yellow composites; Ranunculaceae; white umbellifers; Allium ursinum, Anemone nemorosa, Fragaria, Potentilla erecta, Primula, Prunus spinosa, Salix.
Irish reference specimens
In the collections of NMI and UM
Determination
van der Goot (1981). Existing diagnostic keys do not sufficiently take into account the variability of this species. In particular, although normally stated to be bare-eyed, its eyes are frequently distinctly hairy. Spring brood specimens tend to be large and brown-haired over the entire body surface, whereas summer brood specimens are frequently smaller and mostly or almost entirely black-haired. The adult insect is illustrated in colour in Bartsch et al (2009b), Torp (1984, 1994) and van der Goot (1986). The surstyli of the male terminalia are figured by Stubbs and Falk (2002).
Distribution
World distribution(GBIF)
Fennoscandia south to Iberia; from Ireland eastwards through central and southern Europe into Turkey and Russia and on throughout Siberia. It is also widely distributed and very frequent over much of Europe, from northern Scandinavia almost to the Mediterranean and ranges widely beyond Europe in Siberia, almost reaching the Pacific.
Irish distribution
Recorded as occurring in Ireland in Coe (1953). In Ireland C. pagana is one of the most common and widely distributed of hoverfly species with plant-feeding larvae.
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.