Prochyliza lundbecki Duda 1924

Prochyliza lundbecki (Duda, 1924)

Piophila (Liopiophila) lundbecki Duda 1924: 162. Type locality: Iceland (Dyrefjord). Holotype (♂) in ZMUC.

Material examined. 1 ♂ (ZMUC): Iceland, Stykkishólmur; 17.iv.1938.

Diagnosis. The brush of long, yellowish hairs at the posteroventral apical part of middle tibia of P. lundbecki males is extremely distinctive (Fig. 5 E). The following combination of characters is also distinctive of P. lundbecki: lower two- to three quarters of the frons orange; gena black; front coxa darkened; mid and hind tibiae mostly black; hind coxa with a comb of short, stout setae.

Remarks. Nielsen et al. (1954) described a third-instar piophilid larva which they suggested could belong to Liopiophila varipes or P. lundbecki. However, the morphology of the cephaloskeleton and the anterior spiracles figured by Nielsen et al. (1954), as well as the presence of two rows of spines on the ventral creeping welts, strongly resemble L. varipes larvae (Martín-Vega et al. 2014).

Biology. The larvae are necrophagous. The species was described from specimens breeding and collected on a skeletonized whale carcass (Duda 1924).

Distribution. Holarctic; described from Iceland (Duda 1924), it also occurs in northern North America (McAlpine 1977). The record from Finland (Frey 1941) is a misidentification (Silfverberg 2012). A female from Sweden deposited in the MZLU collection actually belongs to P. nigrimana (see ‘Material examined’ under this species).