Cyrtopogon longimanus

Cyrtopogon longimanus

Cyrtopogon longimanus Loew, 1874 is a Robberfly (Asilidae) known from North America. It is closely related to C. marginalis, also known from the eastern U.S. and Canada, sharing a puffed-up, shiny black scutellum, which lines-up with a series of shiny-black spots along the sides of the thorax with that species.
Cyrtopogon sp. - specimen "B" Soooo.... bear with me a little bit, but this is kind of exciting. Last week I posted up a photo of one of these robber flies. I don't know much at all about them so I went to BugGuide for an ID. I was figuring that "w" mark on the back would make it easy. Little did I know... what came back to me from the experts over there was that there is a good possibility that this species is un-described - but I only had that one photo, which wasn't really enough to start to really make that determination. So - we decided to go back and see if we could catch one. I can't say I was really expecting to be successful.... turns out they are certainly not locally scarce - we saw a number of them and I captured two. They are now up on BugGuide, with more views for the experts to look over and I will be able to take/send them away to an expert as well. In these photos the flies are still alive... I'm a little paranoid about losing them or damaging them, so forgive the plastic cup background... I'll post up here as this project continues! Cyrtopogon longimanus,Geotagged,Spring,United States

Appearance

There seems to be some regional variation in colour pattern, in that the more southern populations tend to be all black, but specimen from up north, such as Washington may carry a white marking dorsally.

References:

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Taxonomy
KingdomAnimalia
DivisionArthropoda
ClassInsecta
OrderDiptera
FamilyAsilidae
GenusCyrtopogon
SpeciesCyrtopogon longimanus
Photographed in
United States of America