Parydra (Chaetoapnaea) quinquemaculata Becker, 1896

Stuke, Jens-Hermann, 2025, Taxonomic and faunistic comments on European Parydra Stenhammar, 1844 (Diptera: Ephydridae) with new species from Finland and Jordan, Zootaxa 5686 (1), pp. 49-105 : 97-98

Parydra (Chaetoapnaea) quinquemaculata Becker, 1896

( Fig. 20 )

Parydra quinquemaculata Becker 1896: 213–214 ; type-locality: „ Schlesien “; syntype ♂ ♀ [ZMB, Mathis & Zatwarnicki 1995].

Napaea Strandi Duda 1942: 38–39 ; type-locality: „Ilfeld S.-Harz“ [ Germany]; lectotype ♂, des. by Papp 1979 [ZMB, Papp 1979], synonymy by Papp (1979).

Primary type material examined:

♀ holotype of P. quinquemaculata in coll. ZMB with these labels: (1) “Warmbr / Scholtz [illegible sign]”; (2) “Coll. / H. Loew ”; (3) “14469”; (4) “ quinquema - / culata ”Beck.”; (5) “ Holotypus ”; (6) “Zool. Mus. / Berlin ” .

♂ lectotype of P. strandi (together with headless ♀ paralectotype) with these labels: (1) “19415”; (2) “Ilfeld / S.-Harz Duda”; (3) “reclinata / Duda ♂ ”; (4) “Flügelgez 1. 5. 41”; (5) “ Lectotypus ”; (6) “ Paralectotypus ”. Another ♂ labelled by Duda as “reclinata” mentioned in the original description and labelled as paralectotype from “ St. Wendel ” belongs to P. hecate .

Additional material examined: GERMANY: 1♀, 22.vi.2008, Lower Saxony, Petersilienwasser 4.5 km sse Braunlage [51.687°N 10.626°E] .

Diagnosis: Recognised due to obvious characters of colouration of the wing and the pattern of light dusting on scutum as described in the key and illustrated in Fig. 19 . Parydra quinquemaculata is most similar to P. hecate . Due to the lack of available material the male terminalia of this species could not be examined. Given this, I cannot rule out the possibility that P. quinquemaculata represents only an extreme colour morph of P. hecate . The absence of a second small dorsocentral seta on the specimens examined may easily be intraspecific variation.

Taxonomy: Mathis & Zatwarnicki (1995) incorrectly placed P. quinquemaculata in the subgenus Parydra s. str. However, the species conforms to all characters given by Clausen & Cook (1971) for the subgenus Chaetoapnaea (new subgenus position).

Distribution in Europe: Widely distributed in mountains of Europe with records from Central European low mountain ranges (e. g. Duda 1942, Karnecká 1980, Stuke et al. 2020, Zatwarnicki 2023, Zatwarnicki et al. 2001), the Alps ( Canzoneri & Vienna 2000, Zatwarnicki 2008), Romania ( Ceianu 1999) and Serbia ( Krivosheina & Ozerov 2022). Outside of Europe it has been reported once from Morocco ( Vitte 1991), but this record should be checked.

Biology: Hardly anything is known about this rarely collected species. It may be restricted to higher elevations. The only specimens recorded by the author were swept at a spring-feed swamp in a wooded valley with a stream. The recorded flight time spans from April to July.

Figures

FIGURE 19. Habitus of Parydra quadripunctata (Meigen).

FIGURE 20. Habitus of Parydra quinquemaculata Becker.