Yellow-marked Fly
Size about 3mm. Found on small flower of a viola ground cover plant. It has a yellow area at the back of its dark and hairy dorsum and seems to have yellow lines (legs, area between eyes, abdomen, shoulder patch, wing stump) all over its body. Eyes are red. Wings show very clear and straight lines. Update 17/9/2017: A lovely little fly presented itself this morning. It was definitely under 3mm, closer to 2mm. This is a regular visitor and is breading happily in our region. It is funny reading Queensland Biosecurity https://www.daf.qld.gov.au/plants/health-pests-diseases/a-z-significant/vegetable-leafminer accessed today), who claim that only one sighting is known in Queensland ("A single incident was recorded in Australia in 2015"). Maybe Mr. Katter counted the same way he is counting other minority groups. I don't think this fly was introduced into Queensland by Johnny Depp's dogs, nor the Kiwi politician of the Year in the Australian parliament. It is also typical for authorities in this part of the world to spend millions on fighting a pest but not sharing a single decent photograph with the federally sponsored bio-database (ALA by the way). Despite its size this fly is easy to find and take pictures of. There are nice contrasts and the fly holds still. One of my photos shows the animal blowing bubbles. As to the taxonomic status I am confident that this is in the Liriomyza genus. Quite frankly, I am still undecided if I should use the common name Vegetable Leaf Miner. It seems so inappropriate and random. I don't adhere to the taxonomic system of classifying all animals into cute/useful and all the rest pests and express that poor understanding of nature in a permanent species name. Most importantly, the name used by Queensland Biosecurity in my understanding clashes since the term Leaf Miner is normally associated with moths.
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