Cranefly species

[MattPrince]

Found this fair sized female crane fly in grassland next to an old riverine wood in mid devon. (25mm head to body length).

Tried keying her out with mixed results, so I'd welcome any comment from dipterists (tipulidists?)

The brown wing shade and pale line suggest tipula and the venation, the length of the wings (past the end of her abdomen) and the width of the gap between the eyes led me to tipla subcunctans - which seems to fit with flight period.

Am I right? Close? Off by a country mile?

In any case, thanks for looking,
Matt

[Geoff F]

Just a thought, Matt.

That faint white line running from the stigma to the discal cell reminds me of T. luna, but it can occur in a few other species. That greyish abdomen looks possible though. Does it have a darker median stripe?

But I'm definitely not an expert in this family; I'm also trying to run a few unidentified craneflies, from this year, through the ID Keys.

[MattPrince]

You're well ahead of me Geoff, I'm just blindly thrashing about from a point of ignorance.

I saw your other post - jason's tip about wing venation was a good one - keying out from the small cross veins in the crumpled area of the wing isn't easy.

I'll have a look at t.luna later.

Thanks,
Matt

[Geoff F]

There are Cranefly Keys here The Society for the study of flies (Diptera) / Draft keys to Craneflies

But they are for individual species and I always struggle to use keys, or anything else technical, direct from my computer. So I downloaded everything then printed it out.

I find that these keys can still be a bit tricky, initially, to get to your required family group but there is a lot of information here when you search for it.

[bugbotherer]

Grey body with that wing pattern, and this time of year probably makes it Tipula paludosa