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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
The syrphidae are famous for their bee and wasp mimickry, but this fly goes the extra mile - it uses its front legs to mimic the jointed wasp antennae of the Vespids. When the fly lands, it hold its front legs up in front of its face and waves them about. The effect is really quite convincing when you see one strike the pose. (The fly in the photos is doing it). Also, the clouded leading edge of the wing mimics the appearance of wasp wings.
Larvae of many species are predacious on aphids. Others live in habitats as diverse as the nests of social insects, decaying vegetation, and polluted water.
The economic importance of flower Flies is great. These Flies are pollinators of major significance. In some agroecosystems, such as orchards, they out perform native bees in pollinating the fruits. Syrphine maggots are important predators of pests, such as aphids, scales, thrips, and catepillars, and are rivaled only by lady-bird beetles and lacewings as predators useful for biological control. Some flower Flies, however, are detrimental. Maggots of a few species (Eumerus, Merodon) attack bulbs and tubers of ornamentals and vegetables. And a few species have been recorded as causing accidental myiasis in man.
They are abundant everywhere except in arid areas of the Old World and in the extreme southern latitudes, Although flower Flies range to the highest latitudes in the north, they are absent from subantararctic islands and Antarctia. Immature stages (eggs, maggots & puparia) are found in a diverse array of habitats. Larvae of the subfamily Microdontinae are inquilines in ants' nests. Those of Syrphinae are predaceous on soft-bodied arthropods, although some may occassionally be scavangers. Those of Eristalinae can predaceous (pipizines), saprophagous in litter and dead wood (most milesiines), coprophagous (some rhingiines and milesiines), mycetophagous (some rhingiines), phytophagous (as borers in tubers, stems, and wood, miners in leaves; most rhingiines, merodontines and some brachyopines), aquatic filter feeders (the rat-tailed maggots, mainly eristalines, some brachyopines and milesiines) or inquilines in social insect nests of termites, wasps, and bees (some volucellines and merodontines).
The family Syrphidae is broken down into 3 subfamily and 15 tribes and contains more than 6,000 described species. Total number of species is much greater, for example, more 200 species are known from Costa Rica but not yet described. |
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