Marleyimyia Hesse

Marshall, Stephen A. & Evenhuis, Neal L., 2015, New species without dead bodies: a case for photo-based descriptions, illustrated by a striking new species of Marleyimyia Hesse (Diptera, Bombyliidae) from South Africa, ZooKeys 525, pp. 117-127 : 120

Taxon classification Animalia Diptera Bombyliidae

Genus Marleyimyia Hesse

Marleyimyia Hesse, 1956: 521. Type species: Marleyimyia natalensis Hesse, 1956, by original designation.

Remarks.

Marleyimyia Hesse, 1956 was originally described based on a single male specimen with vestigial mouthparts and bred from a log containing cossid larvae. The genus is currently known from only three specimens representing two described species from widely disjunct localities: Marleyimyia goliath (Oldroyd) from Peninsular Malaysia and Marleyimyia natalensis Hesse from southern Africa. In proposing his new genus, Hesse (1956) distinguished Marleyimyia from Oestranthrax Bezzi, 1921 by the larger body, the head wider than the thorax, and the differently shaped, although reduced, proboscis (pointed apically in Marleyimyia and short with a small fleshy labellum in Oestranthrax ). Hesse distinguished Marleyimyia from Villoestrus Paramonov, 1931 by the same body and head features as above, but also the presence of a reduced proboscis (proboscis totally absent in Villoestrus ). Oldroyd (1951) described his new Malaysian species as Oestranthrax goliath based on a single male and female bred from the pupa of a cossid moth and claimed it to be the largest in bulk of any bee fly he had seen. Bowden (1975) transferred Oestranthrax goliath to Marleyimyia and Bowden (1978) echoed Oldroyd’s (1951) presumption that the species in the genus had the appearance of a crepuscular or nocturnal habit. If this nocturnal habit is proven to be true, then the new species described below differs in having been seen during the day (photographed at two separate localities), but it has the same unusual antennal shape as found in the male and female of Marleyimyia goliath (a similar lanceolate shape but shorter and stouter is found only in one other bombyliid species, the Nearctic Oestranthrax farinosus Johnson & Maughan, and only in females of that species). The antennal shape in the new species described here is not found in the male holotype of the type species, Marleyimyia natalensis , but it is found in the female of the undescribed species of Marleyimyia from Nigeria mentioned by Bowden (1978) and may be a female-specific character for species of Marleyimyia .