Macromia females - M. unca and M. moorei

As explained in the previous posting, to my shame I had called all red-brownish faced Macromia that I encountered M. pinratani vietnamica. So it came as quite a shock that when I caught a female heavily ringed with yellow on the abdomen and a brown face in Yen Bai and was a little worried about its identity, that checking the literature I found out this was M. moorei. I wonder how many I overlooked. I will quickly try to get a male in the pages too.

The other female I want to show here is Macromia unca. A week ago Sebastien Delonglee caught a female at dusk in Xuan Son that he identified as M. unca, a species described in 2004 by Keith Wilson for Southern China. What is interesting about this species that it apparently becomes active during dark periods of the day or at dusk. Sebastien gave me an assignment to go and find the male. Well, on Saturday, towards dusk, I caught a female Macromia with brownish smoked wings and the facial pattern of M. unca, but no male. When I went back on Sunday afternoon the species started swarming towards dusk. I saw at least 7 and caught 3 of them for checking, before I released them again. They were all females! They seemed to be dropping eggs, maybe they mate in the darkness of the forest.

Macromia unca, female. Note ochre labium and yellow postclypeus and sides of frons.

The face in close-up

Scan in dorsal view of M. unca, note the brown wings. This is their natural state.

Thorax pattern of female M. unca.

And the female of Macromia moorei. Superficially like M. pinratani vietnamica, but note the complete yellow ring on S2.

The face in frontal view.