1931 ] 
A Cuban Vermileo 
165 
A CUBAN VERMILEO 
By William Morton Wheeler 
In a brief note 1 I recently recorded the occurrence in 
Cuba of a very handsome species of the Rhagionid genus 
Vermileo. Knowing my interest in these insects, one of my 
students, Mr. Richard P. Dow, brought me 30 living larvse 
which he had collected August 28 and 29, 1930, from their 
pitfalls in the sand under overhanging limestone cliffs at 
Mayari (2800 feet) and San Jose (900 feet) in the Trini- 
dad Mountains of the southern part of that island. Three 
of the larvse pupated after I had transferred them to 
fresh sand. Two failed to yield imagines, but in late Octo- 
ber a somewhat crippled male fly issued from the third, and 
was readily identified as belonging to Pheneus tibialis , 
described by Walker some eighty years ago from Jamaica. 2 
This insect is of unusual interest, both on account of its 
peculiar larval habits and because it is the type of Walker’s 
genus Pheneus, which now becomes merely one of the 
numerous synonyms of Vermileo. In the note above cited 
I also called attention to the existence of yet another species 
of this genus, taken by H. H. Smith at an altitude of 7000 
feet in the State of Guerrero, Mexico. This form was 
described by Williston in 1895 3 as Arthrostylum fascipennis, 
but was later 4 regarded by him as synonymous with 
Walker’s Pheneus tibialis. The description, however, shows 
that it must be a different species of Vermileo. Of this 
genus, therefore, we now know four widely and discontinu- 
1 In “Demons of the Dust,” W. W. Norton, New York, 1930, p. 275. 
2 Insecta Saundersiana. Vol. I, Diptera. London, 1850-1856, p. 156, 
PI. 4, Fig. 3.) 
3 Two Remarkable New Genera of Diptera, Kansas Univ. Quart. 4, 
1895-1896, pp. 107-109. 
4 Biol. Centr. Diptera, 1, 1901, p. 264. 
