King of flies

Awesome shot--incredible detail!

Wonderful capture of this cool looking fly. Great DOF and detail

Superb Photo of this "King" . Great details and love the banding in the eye.

Stunning! Long live the king.

Dan, a "crowning" achievement to get this image. Superb subject detail. Thanks for posting this.

Edit - Suggestion for alt. title: Lord of the Flies.

Definitely, Lord of the Flies! Detail and sharpness is spot on.

Most definitely Lord of the Flies... Just fabulous, tremendous detail and spot-on dof

Hi Dan This is some sharp king " pun intended" Well composed with superb detail
Albert Darmo

Remarkable, fantastic.

A cute critter indeed, very well depicted- Excellent sharpness an a fine composition- As for id, it should be a horsefly, and the genus Haematopota, not sure about the exact species- Great job, Fabio

PS: Hat off to Wayne for his smart ID: I'll be quiet next time

Wow, what a fantastic profile! Detail and light are exquisite.
Dipteran taxonomy is a real weak spot for me, but the head profile, antennae, and those eyes (too round from this angle) don't look quite Tabanid-like to me (although it certainly does look a lot like some of the Haematopota spp. that Fabio mentioned. If it does not turn out to be a Tabanid, try looking in the Family Sciomyzidae (marsh flies). It would be interesting to find out what this is.

ADDENDUM: Dan, I just took a minute to look up some pics of Sciomyzids, and found this on Google: Limnia unguicornis. Notice the profile of the head, and the fact that the antennae are attached much higher on the face than Tabanids.

Wayne - thanks for finding the id. My eventual plan was to start with marsh flies but I simply hadn't gotten around to it.

You're welcome, Dan. Looks like we both agree it's a marsh fly. By the way, some people who might read this could think that Limnia unguicornis is a positive ID for this critter, but at this point all I am confident about is that we have found the right family. My intent was to show you a an example of a marsh fly that looks a lot like the one in your picture. Looking at the morphological similarities would show some of us that we have very likely found the correct family. However, only a scientific key to the species in that family (or an expert on that family) will provide a confident ID. For all I know, there may be a dozen species that look like the marsh fly in the picture. In most cases of insect ID, I am just happy to find the family.

In the world of invertebrates, the "looks like this picture" method can easily mislead people, especially those using online information. All those pictures on the web (some of which are misidentified) can give people false confidence. We need to remember that -- unlike birds and mammals -- there are almost a million insects that have names (the vast majority with only Latin names), and even more that have not been named, and many of them look a lot alike.

Thanks for posting the clarification on species id. I've spent enough time trying to id insects that at times my eyes start bugging out wondering if I got the right diagnostic characteristics. I'd use your id with the 70's SALT treaty warning: trust but verify.

You learn a lot in the process of id'ing, some of which makes you wonder how they can tell themselves. Female scorpion flies are practically unidentifiable to the species, males usually require shots of the genitalia to be 100% certain and something you think would be easy like dragonflies gives us Sympetrum internum (Cherry-face Meadowhawk), S. rubicundulum (Ruby meadowhawk) and juvenile S. obtrusum (White-faced meadowhawk) that cannot be reliably differentiated in the field.

Excllent portrait - perfect DOF .
Congrats on the WP!
Sandy

Well deserved WP.