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Turneromyia sp ES3

This is a really important find for us.

Ever since I first saw Tony's wing venation comparison between Turneromyia & Ctenostegus and tied them to our finds. To date, all Ctenostegus were small (~10mm) & the Turneromyia were larger (~12mm - 23mm). Then using the 10 & 11 flagellomere test were able to determine most of our smaller Turneromyia were male, and larger were female.

I had often considered the extra wing venations of Turneromyia were there to help support the much larger animals.

HOWEVER, this one is a ~10mm female. So a different species to our 23mm female. AND the wing venation proves Turneromyia. So I've managed to break my own hypothesis that Turneromyia are big & Ctenostegus are small.

Additionally the markings on this one are different to our other 2 Turneromyia species.

Further, to my eye, this looks EXACTLY the same as our other Ctenostegus; but wing venation proves they are different genera.

Gotta love science!

https://www.ellura.info/Diptera-Hymenoptera.html#Wasp:-Pompilidae:-Pompilinae

Middleton Point at low tide. River Murray flood waters have resulted in large number of dead fish, bivalves and other marine invertebrates washing onto the beach. The bivalves and marine invertebrates normally inhabit the littoral sand zone but could not survive the large influx of Murray water into the ocean.

Numerous individuals aggregated together, mostly small juveniles but one large male. They mobbed us pretty actively when we entered the area - not aggressively, but certainly not shy of the occasional head bump, with the big male coming in repeatedly to have its chin scratched!

Many of them had hooks in their mouths. and several of them appeared to have been finned by fishermen, the tops of their dorsal fins cut off at about the level of the spine ...

These cute fluffy balls of warm fuzzies were very much under the protective eye of both parents. I'm thankful I had my zoom lens on the camera so I could keep my distance & not disturb the happy family.