Taxonomy
Volucella pellucens
Distribution
Species Biology
Preferred environment
Deciduous forest; mesophilous Fagus, acidophilous and thermophilous Quercus; scrub and (on occasion) hedgerows. The association of V.pellucens with the common Irish wasps Vespula germanica and V. vulgaris, as hosts for its larvae, ensures that this syrphid is frequent here. However, V. pellucens does not seem to occur in the full range of situations occupied by its wasp hosts and is largely absent from the standard farmland landscape of green fields and hedges, and also from gardens and suburban parks. It is primarily a deciduous woodland insect (including scrub woodland of Corylus etc.) in Ireland. It is not recorded from conifer plantations, other than round their edges or, occasionally, along well-vegetated track margins. It can be regarded as to some extent anthropophilic here, but seems largely dependent upon presence of deciduous woodland or scrub.
Adult habitat & habits
Clearings, tracksides etc., in a wide variety of wooded situations, including scrub woodland and hedgerows; adults fly at 1 - 3 metres, the males often hovering rather higher, at up to 7m, over tracks etc.
Flight period
May/October. Larva: described and figured by Hartley (1961) and illustrated in colour by Rotheray (1994); redescribed and refigured by Rotheray (1999b). The larvae are scavengers/larval predators in nests of wasps (Vespula), where they occur in the floor of the nest cavity, as shown diagrammatically by Schmid (1996). Barkemeyer (1994), provides a comprehensive précis of available literature on the biology of this species. Rotheray (1999b) provides a key to the determination of the larvae and puparia of European Volucella species, other than V. elegans.
Flowers visited
Visits the flowers of a wide range of low-growing plants, bushes and trees. De Buck (1990) provides a comprehensive list of flowers visited.
Irish reference specimens
In the collections of NMI and UM
Determination
See key provided in the StN Keys volume. The adult insect is illustrated in colour by Bartsch et al (2009b), Kormann, Stubbs and Falk (1983), Torp (1984, 1994) and van der Goot (1986).
Distribution
World distribution(GBIF)
From Fennoscandia south to Iberia; from Ireland eastwards through Eurasia to Japan; India and Malaya in the Oriental region; the Caucasus. V. pellucens is common and generally distributed in Ireland and in much of the rest of Europe. It does not extend into northern Europe as far as V. bombylans, but is more frequent than that species in southern Europe. Beyond Europe, V. pellucens through Asiatic parts of the Palaearctic to the Pacific and into the Oriental region, but is not, apparently, known in N America.
Irish distribution
Recorded as occurring in Ireland in Coe (1953). V. pellucens is common and generally distributed in Ireland.
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.