Insects IV - True Flies, Dragonflies and insects with "fly" in their name
Male and Female Crane Flies; Tipula bicornis
Diptera May 11, 2007 Crane flies look like giant mosquitoes, but they do not bite. The female is the fly on the left, she has a thicker and more pointed abdomen. The male's abdomen has claspers for mating. True flies are in the order Diptera, meaning "2-winged"; all other winged insects have 4 wings. Flies have small, knobbed vestigal wings called "halteres" which are used as stabilizers. The halteres are not visible on these insects. True flies have the name "fly" as a second word, as opposed to a butterfly or dragonfly which are not flies.
sp. Sept. 2007 My students were pretty shaken up when they saw this Crane Fly. They thought it was a giant mosquito! I explained that it was nothing to be afraid of, they have no mouth as an adult and can't bite. Crane flies lay their eggs in water which develop into large aquatic larvae. (see next photo)
This Tachnid fly (Repetitive Tachnid Fly?) eats flower nectar as an adult, but as a larva it was a parasite in a caterpillar.
spp. / Diptera This was a huge horsefly that I saw feeding on a horse during a hike at Haw Ridge. Female Horseflies inflict painful bites to obtain a blood meal. Note the small drop of liquid the fly has excreted. Not long after I took this photo the owner squashed the fly! There are some animals that I will kill, if it bites me, I squash it!
Mating Flies are able to fly connected like this! I once had a second grade student who ran up to me during an outdoor insect class, he held out the collection jar and said excitedly, "Look, Mrs. Light, I caught a 2-headed fly!" ;-)
My educated guess is that this is a Syrphid Fly Larva, it looks like a green, legless maggot. This will probably turn into one of those little Flower flies that look like a bee and can hover in mid-air. The head of this larva is the pointed end on the right side.
The halteres of this Cranefly are easy to see in this photo. My mother laughed when she walked by the bathroom and saw me with the tripod on the vanity counter focusing on this guy! Having strange insects in the house is just part of living in the woods in Florida! The halteres are easy to see on this crane fly. Halteres are vestigial wings that flies have, they are used to help stabilize the insect when it flies.
June 11, 2007 A girl found this big "gunmetal blue" fly on the ground at science camp. It was 1-1/2" long. We may have accidently disturbed an upcoming "romantic encounter" because there was a male and female very close by! A side-view photo follows. Thanks to Philip at Bugguide.net for identifying this fly for me!
) is trying to get in on the blood-eating action. It often seems that flies are out to get us when we go outdoors and they are! The good news is that only female flies bite and only a few of those are the blood sucking type. Houseflies have lapping mouthtypes, they don't bite. So, it's not as bad as it may seem! :)
Yes, I know this is a gross picture, but it shows the important role that flies play in the recycling of dead animals. Without the help of fly maggots, it would take much longer for bacteria and fungi to decompose carrion, such as this roadkill raccoon. Flies, their larvae and pupae have been used in identifying the time of death in homicide cases because timing of their metamorphosis is so well understood.
I was amazed to see several of these male Midges oozing out a brown liquid from the tip of their abdomens each evening around 9:30. I don't know if they were getting prepared to mate or what! I'm sure the other guests at the hotel wondered why I kept flashing my camera as I tried to get photos like this. ***Update*** I finally got an answer to this mystery via Dr. Frans Janssens, an entomologist in Belgium I contacted through Bugguide.net! Here is an excerpt from his email. It confirmed what I had suspected. "The large everted forward directed body part is the aedeagus, the male 'external'reproductive organ. The phallus, so to speak. In Diptera the aedeagus can become quite large. It is an everted inflatable copulation structure. In the picture the aedeagus is everted in the correct position for copulation. I have no idea what the brown liquid is about and why the midge dips its abdomen in it."
was caught by some students during a Stream Ecology class. It was put into a white tray for observing. It breathes through the little projections on the upper end. For a fun test on freshwater critter knowledge, try this website: aquatic critters game
This large blue-gray Mydas Fly had an orange and white segment on its' abdomen, perhaps it was a University of Tennessee Volunteers fan! (For the non-Vols out there, orange and white is UT's school colors). It also had a lapping mouthpart, so obviously it was a liquid-eating fly, not a biting kind.
Like other insects, flies have compound eyes that are made up of thousands of smaller faceted eyes. Insects don't see one image per facet, they see objects in a distorted, somewhat blurred view. They are very sensitive to movement however, that's why it's so hard to swat a fly! It is interesting how the compound eyes refract the light into many different colors on some insects! This Deer Fly is probably a male, due to the fact the eyes nearly meet a the center of the head.
Black Horse Fly; Tabanus atratus
Munson, FL September 2007 I photographed this unusual Fly in a wetland near Krul Lake in Florida. Thanks to the folks at Bugguide, I learned that she was laying eggs in a ribbon-shaped white cone. I saw others doing this too. Considering the size of her biting mouthparts, I'm sure glad she was preoccupied with laying eggs!
day1 "Baby" flies are called maggots. They eat decaying plant and animal matter. As nasty as maggots look, they perform a very important function as "Mother Nature's Recyclers" by returning nutrients to the environment.
A Syrphid fly larva (left) and pupa on an aphid-infested milkweed leaf. This larva was one of the many aphid munchers that I saw while I was looking at the leaves. Others included Ladybug, Mealybug Destroyer and Lacewing larvae. The aphids were in no danger of being wiped out however, at the rate they multiply they can easily outpace their predators. The dark brown insect at the right appears to be a syrphid fly pupa.
Phantom Crane Fly; Bittacomorpha
spp. Oak Ridge, TN June 18, 2010 These are very bizarre insects, they fly with their legs sticking straight out like this, they appear to float through the air.
Katydid; Microcentrum retinerve
Orthoptera This male Katydid has just been doomed to death by this female Tachnid Fly. When the parasitic fly swooped down to lay her egg on the katydid he struggled to avoid her, notice how his abdomen is pulled up toward his thorax. The egg will hatch a small maggot which will bury into the katydid to eat him alive. These flies will parasitize caterpillars too. Katydids, grasshoppers, and crickets are in the order Orthoptera, which means "straight-wing".
spp. / Diptera My husband has a lot more patience and nerve (and hair!) than I do; I would NEVER let a Horse fly stay on me long enough for someone to photograph it! I just know she would bite me! Only female flies bite, to get a protein-filled blood meal in order to be able to lay eggs and make more little biters!
Golden-backed Snipe Fly; Chrysopilus thoracicus
Diptera I found this pretty fly during the 2006 Science Camp in Oak Ridge in June. This one is a male, he has a long, narrow thorax. Thanks to John and Jane, who identified it for me on bugguide.net
Fungus Gnat larvae; (Sciaridae
spp.)! A group of campers at my 2005 science camp found these migrating maggots crossing the road the day after a big rain. The cohesive mass moved as a group to take on the appearance of a larger organism as a method of protection. I was thrilled to learn that Fungus gnats are responsible for pollinating Jack-in-the-Pulpit flowers! Cool! Gnats, other flies, beetles, bees, ants, and many other insects go through complete metamorphosis. "Meta" means change, "morpho" means shape. All insects start out their life in the egg stage. An insect that goes through complete metamorphosis hatches from the egg as a larva. The larva is the "eating, pooping, growing and molting" stage of the insect's life. Some insects gain several thousand times their hatching weight and grow greatly in length at this stage. After molting up to 5 times the larva goes through the next stage of major changes. The larva sheds its' skin and becomes a pupa, in butterflies this is a chrysalis, in a moth it is a cocoon. In the pupa stage the insect becomes a soupy mix of rearranging cells, in time a new mouth, a different body shape, internal organs and wings develop. Soon the adult emerges from the larval stage. Some adult insects live for a very short time, some have no mouth and don't eat. Only adult insects have wings and are able to breed.
I was amazed to watch this natural drama play out before my eyes. A Syrphid larva caught an aphid (top one), a black ant came over to try and attack the larva. A second aphid walked on top of the larva, not a very smart move, but it got away with it that time! The ant is very blurry, but everything happened so fast I didn't have time to get it in focus.