Tricharaea (Sarcophagula) occidua ( Fabricius, 1794 )

Mariluis, Pablo Ricardo Mulieri Juan Carlos & Patitucci, Luciano Damián, 2010, Review of the Sarcophaginae (Diptera: Sarcophagidae) of Buenos Aires Province (Argentina), with a key and description of a new species, Zootaxa 2575, pp. 1-37 : 31

Tricharaea (Sarcophagula) occidua ( Fabricius, 1794)

Musca occidua Fabricius, 1794: 315 .

Tachina pusilla Wiedemann, 1830: 337 . (Junior secondary homonym of Musca pusilla Macquart, 1848 .) Sarcophaga sugens Wiedemann, 1830: 367 .

Sarcophaga parvula Wiedemann, 1830: 368 .

Sarcophaga parva Walker, 1853: 321 .

Sarcophaga despecta Thomson, 1869: 540 .

Sarcophagula imbecilla Wulp, 1896: 289 .

Distribution: Nearctic, Neotropical – Argentina (Buenos Aires, Entre Ríos), Brazil (Amazonas, Ceará, Goiás, Maranhão, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo), Chile (Tarapacá), Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Is. Galápagos, Guyana, Haití, Mexico (Guerrero, Jalisco, Nayarit, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, Veracruz), Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, Puerto Rico, Venezuela – Australasian/Oceanian.

Material studied: Buenos Aires: 1 ɗ, 2 Ψ Ciud. Aut. Buenos Aires, X.1946 ( ANLIS); 1 Ψ Mar del Tuyú, De la Costa, 25. II.2006, Mulieri leg. ( ANLIS); 1 ɗ Campana, Campana, XI.1998, Mariluis leg. ( ANLIS); 12 ɗ, 1 Ψ Campana, Campana, III.2003, Mariluis leg. ( ANLIS); 1 ΨVilla Elisa, La Plata, II.1982, Mariluis leg. ( ANLIS); 1 Ψ Santa Clara del Mar, Mar Chiquita, 25.XII.2005 on faeces, Mulieri leg. ( ANLIS).

Remarks: The females of this species are indistinguishable from those of T. (S.) cannuta Wulp. However , after the examination of large series of male specimens captured in previous works ( Mariluis et al. 2007; Mulieri et al. 2008) we found the exclusive presence of T. (S.) occidua , hence we safely ascribed the females to this species. Illustrations of the male terminalia were provided by Aldrich (1916), Blanchard (1939) and Lopes (1956).

Biology: In Buenos Aires, the adults of this species showed higher abundance during the summer, and exhibit strong preferences for grasslands and attraction to faeces ( Mariluis et al. 2007; Mulieri et al. 2008). The larvae of T. (S.) occidua possess coprophagous habits (D’Almeida 1988, 1989; Marchiori et al. 2001; Mendes & Linhares 2002).