Ctenophora pectinicornis from the true crane flies family.

Ctenophora pectinicornis from the true crane flies family.

Hi all!

Today I was sorting through my archive of photographs and discovered previously unpublished photographs of an interesting insect, which I found on the basement wall of a multi-storey building, not far from the basement ventilation window, from where warm, foul-smelling air came from.

This insect attracted my attention because of its large size and interesting color.

To be honest, I had not seen such an insect before and its name was unknown to me at that time.

It looked like a mixture of large mosquito, Chrysis mud wasp and Coenagrionidae arrowfly.

The color of this insect was very similar to the color of the above predators, and, probably, to some extent, it protected this insect from the attack of those who did not want to mess with a serious enemy.

The abdomen of this insect is about 4 centimeters long, and its powerful legs, in comparison with a mosquito, could completely block a matchbox.

I decided to determine the species of this insect, but, in view of the limited search capabilities, due to closed access to many encyclopedias that are hosted on Russian sites, this was problematic.

I tried different options, and the most correct was the search for the Diptera order, which includes mosquitoes, Syrphoidea hoverflies, gadflies, flies and many more varieties of insects.

This variant of the search indicated to me that this insect is Ctenophora pectinicornis from the true crane flies family.

Yes, it's a mosquito, and. Thank God ordinary mosquitoes don't look like this one.

I imagined how the chitinous cover of this mosquito crunches every time we cover with the palm of the one who bites us, lol.

Then, I was able to take only three photographs, the third did not turn out as I wanted, and when I wanted to take the fourth photograph, the insect flew away.

Here, such a pleasant acquaintance took place only because I decided to cut my path and walk along a narrow path, along the wall of a concrete high-rise building.

Photos taken with a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX300 camera.

Author @barski.
Ukraine.