Gunilla Ståhls‡Corresponding author: Gunilla Ståhls ( gunilla.stahls@helsinki.fi ) © Gunilla Ståhls. This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Citation:
Ståhls G (2024) Host fungus confirmed for Pelecocera (Pelecocera) tricinta and Pelecocera (Chamaesyrphus) caledonica (Diptera, Syrphidae). ARPHA Preprints. https://doi.org/10.3897/arphapreprints.e118611 |  |
MtDNA COI barcodes have frequently been used to associate an unknown life stage in insects with a known species. This study reports the discovery of hoverfly larvae in the fungal fruit bodies of Rhizopogon luteolus Fr. & Nordholm, 1817, and the identification of these as Pelecocera (Pelecocera) tricincta and Pelecocera (Chamaesyrphus) caledonica (Collin, 1940) (Diptera, Syrphidae), confirming for the first time mycophagy as feeding mode of the larvae of these Pelecocera species in the Western Palaearctic region. The species identity of some larvae was firstly resolved using mtDNA COI barcodes generated from the larvae and tree-based identification. Obtained puparia were reared into adult flies and produced the same two species. The morphological features of these mycophagous larvae are compared with those of other fungus feeding hoverfly species.