Dolichotachina smithii (Townsend, 1938) Townsend, 1938

O'Hara, James E., Raper, Christopher M., Pont, Adrian C. & Whitmore, Daniel, 2013, Reassessment of Paleotachina Townsend and Electrotachina Townsend and their removal from the Tachinidae (Diptera), ZooKeys 361, pp. 27-36 : 31-33

Dolichotachina smithii (Townsend, 1938) comb. n. Figs 7-13

Electrotachina smithii Townsend, 1938: 166. Holotype female, in copal (NHM, No. 58551). Type locality: East Africa ( Grimaldi et al. 1994).

Remarks.

Townsend (1938: 166) began his description of Electrotachina with: "Genotype, Electrotachina smithii sp. nov. For new genus Muscidae aff. Tachina sp. F. Smith, Quart. Jn. Sc., V, 184, pl. 18, fig. 5 ( 1868). Fly Lower Oligocene of Baltic amber". A brief description followed, ending with the statement "probably exoristid or tachinid stock". There is no indication that Townsend examined the specimen and his description is consistent with the drawing of a fly in fig. 5 in Smith (1868). As with Paleotachina , Townsend (1942: 12) later provided a brief description of the genus, presumably from fig. 5 in Smith (1868), and referred to the genus as "almost certainly exoristid stock".

As with Paleotachina smithii , certain liberties were taken in the depiction of NHM specimen #58551 (holotype of Electrotachina smithii ) in fig. 5 in Smith (1868), and it may also have been shown as a mirror image of the original specimen; cf. Figs 7, 13.

Electrotachina smithii belongs to the family Sarcophagidae , subfamily Miltogramminae . The holotype female has a body length of about 7 mm and is preserved in a small block of copal (approx. 15 × 10 × 7 mm) together with two other adult dipterans: a small female Agromyzidae and a Cecidomyiidae . The specimen is in very good condition except for the lack of its right fore tarsus. Antennae, wings and chaetotaxy are all in excellent condition. The specimen can be confidently assigned to the genus Dolichotachina based on the following combination of external character states: arista short pubescent, thickened on approximately basal 1/5; eye bare; parafacial with an uneven row of setae anteriorly; proepisternum bare; katepisternum with two, widely separated, setae; mid tibia with one anterodorsal seta; wing cell r4+5 open at wing margin.

In addition to the above features, Dolichotachina smithii is characterized by an elongated postpedicel (about 3 times length of pedicel), relatively short vibrissa, and short proboscis (about twice as long as wide).

Dolichotachina is a mainly Afrotropical genus with 12 species previously known from this region ( Pape 1996). Material recently collected in Burundi and Namibia has demonstrated that the Afrotropical diversity of Dolichotachina is probably greatly underestimated (Whitmore & Pape, unpublished). The condition of the holotype and the difficulty of identifying Dolichotachina females have not allowed us to verify whether this specimen is conspecific with any of the other described species. Lacking any strong indication to the contrary, we consider Dolichotachina smithii to be a valid, probably extant, species from East Africa.