![\"Paraberismyia](\"http:\/\/www.pensoft.net\/J_FILES\/1\/articles\/6301\/export.php_files\/ZooKeys-353-025-g001.jpg\")
<\/a>Holotype Female of Paraberismyia chiapas Woodley by Norm Woodley CC-BY (Figures 1 & 2 from Woodley, 2013)<\/p><\/div>\n
A member of the Beridinae, a subfamily of soldier flies known for their colourful & metallic appearance,\u00a0Paraberismyia chiapas<\/em> had been recognized as an undescribed species by Norm Woodley<\/a> in 1995 when he described the genus\u00a0Paraberismyia<\/em>, but because he only knew of a single female specimen at the time, he decided to hold off on formally describing the species until he could locate additional specimens. Fast forward nearly 20 years, and a second specimen of\u00a0Paraberismyia chiapas<\/em> has yet to be collected, so Norm decided to not wait any longer and published this and 2 other new species in the journal ZooKeys earlier this week.<\/p>\n Having only a single specimen collected in 1985 by Amnon Friedberg (who happens to be the same guy who studied and\u00a0described several of the “ant-winged” fruit flies<\/a>\u00a0that went viral earlier this month — the dipterological community is an incestuous little group…), we don’t know much about this species, other than it lives in the Chiapas region of Mexico (hence it’s species name) at an elevation of 2,000 metres.<\/p>\n Despite there being a large entomological survey project going on in the region for the past 5 years (the LLAMA project<\/a>, which, while focused on leaf-litter arthropods, you could imagine would have collected a bright green & gold fly that likely breeds and develops in leaf-litter like other members of the Beridinae), Paraberismyia chiapas<\/em> has yet to make a second appearance, leaving many questions about it’s apparent rarity unanswered:\u00a0is this species only\u00a0found on a single mountain top, or is it restricted to a small expanse of high elevation habitats in the southern Sierra Madre de Chiapas mountain range? Is the window when adults are actively flying so short that other expeditions have just missed it? Or more concerning, has Paraberismyia chiapas<\/em>\u00a0disappeared completely, stolen from us before we had even given it a name?\u00a0Obviously we can’t answer any of these questions, or the hundreds more regarding it’s biology and natural history (including why it’s so stunningly coloured), until someone hits pay dirt and rediscovers this little gem.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n The other 3 species in the genus\u00a0Paraberismyia<\/em> are equally stunning, and I highly recommend taking a look at them (the paper is open access). In the jungles of southern Mexico there are treasures that glitter and sparkle more than even the most luxurious displays at Tiffany’s, so rare we’ve only ever caught a glimpse of them once. These jewels are made not of stone, crystal or precious metal, but rather segments, cuticle and a punctate mesonotum. Yes, like usual, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,4,176,10,481],"tags":[598,370,38,597],"class_list":["post-2970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool-science","category-entomology","category-publication","category-taxonomy","category-to-know-a-fly","tag-diptera","tag-new-species","tag-stratiomyidae","tag-taxonomy","category-130-id","category-4-id","category-176-id","category-10-id","category-481-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2970"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2978,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2970\/revisions\/2978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWoodley N. (2013). A revision of the Neotropical genus Paraberismyia<\/em> Woodley (Diptera, Stratiomyidae, Beridinae) with\u00a0three\u00a0new species, ZooKeys, 353<\/span> 25-45. DOI: 10.3897\/zookeys.353.6301<\/a>\u00a0(OPEN ACCESS)<\/span><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"