New species of louse fly discovered on the Island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands
The description of a new species of louse (flat) fly (Diptera: Hippoboscidae) had been published in International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife
Ornithomya palmae Wawman & Milá, 2025 was collected, on the island of La Palma, by Borja Milá from the Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, National Museum of Natural Sciences, Madrid, while he was ringing Canary Islands Chaffinches for a long-term ornithological study. Borja sent the flies to Denise Wawman (EGI, Oxford) who recognised them as a new species.
Ornithomya palmae is most closely related, both morphologically and genetically, to Ornithomya chloropus (Bergroth, 1901). Unlike other species in the genus Ornithomya, the new species has a series of horizontal ridges running across the hind part of the thorax. The most obvious differences between O. palmae and O. chloropus are the arrangement of the wing veins and the lack of dark markings on the under surface of O. palmae. DNA sequencing of the COXI gene showed that newly described species appears as sister to O. chloropus with average divergence from O. chloropus, based on p-distances of 4.31%.
The holotype of the O. palmae has been returned to the museum in Madrid with the male paratype, but a female paratype is now in the collection of Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
Link to paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijppaw.2025.101142
