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For terms see Morphology of Diptera.Chloropidae are minute to small (1.0 to 4.0 mm), rarely medium-sized, flies (6.0 to 9.0 and 12 mm) They are either black, gray, yellow, or greenish and the mesonotum often has a pattern of three to five dark longitudinal stripes against a light-colored background.
They have powerful wings and are found typically in flight over flowers or resting on the bare ground exposed to the sun (watch video) They significantly contribute to cross pollination of plants, becoming the main pollinators of some plant species of desert environments. Unlike the majority of glyciphagous dipterans, the bee flies feed on ...
Phorid flies are found worldwide, though the greatest variety of species is to be found in the tropics. The Phoridae show the greatest diversity of all the dipterous families. Larvae are found in the nests of social insects and in some aquatic habitats, in organic detritus such as dung, carrion, insect frass, and dead snails. Some are synanthropic.
They include many familiar insects such as house flies, blow flies, mosquitoes, gnats, black flies, midges and fruit flies. More than 150,000 have been formally described and the actual species diversity is much greater, with the flies from many parts of the world yet to be studied intensively.
Some fruit flies show Batesian mimicry, bearing the colors and markings of dangerous arthropods such as wasps or jumping spiders because it helps the fruit flies avoid predation, though the flies lack stingers. Adult tephritid fruit flies are often found on the host plant and feeding on pollen, nectar, rotting plant debris, or honeydew.
Larval Diptera feed in leaf-litter, in leaves, stems, roots, flower and seed heads of plants, moss, fungi, rotting wood, rotting fruit or other organic matter such as slime, flowing sap, and rotting cacti, carrion, dung, detritus in mammal bird or wasp nests, fine organic material including insect frass and micro-organisms.
Anastrepha is the most diverse genus in the American tropics and subtropics. Currently, it comprises more than 300 described species, including nine major pest species, such as the Mexican fruit fly (A. ludens), the South American fruit fly (A. fraterculus complex), the West Indian fruit fly (), the sapote fruit fly (A. serpentina), the Caribbean fruit fly (A. suspensa), the American guava ...
Sciarid flies are common pests of mushroom houses and of plants grown in protected culture, for example herbs, where the warm and moist conditions favour their rapid development. In commercial mushroom houses, sciarid fly larvae tunnel into the stalks of the mushrooms, and feeding damage can sever developing mycelium, causing mushrooms to ...