Tag: Diptera
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138/150: Lonchopteridae – Flies without fathers
Animalia: Arthropoda: Insecta: Diptera: Lonchopteridae: Lonchoptera: Lonchoptera bifurcata (Fallen, 1810) Lonchoptera bifurcata is known as a pointed-winged or spear winged fly with a Holarctic distribution. This means the species is found in all non-tropical regions across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa! The fly can be distinguished from similar species due to the pale-coloured bristles…
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108/150: Dead moose, buffet, fighting arena, or dance floor? For waltzing flies, it’s all the above
Animalia: Arthropoda: Insecta: Diptera: Piophilidae: Piophilinae: Prochyliza: Prochyliza xanthostoma (Walker, 1849) This North American fly occurs in forests, aggregating around moose carcasses as they are carrion feeders. Females will wait on vegetation surrounding a carcass and watch males combat on the carcass. The flies are sexually dimorphic and males have larger antennae, head capsules, and…
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101/150: Not a banana, not a mango, it’s a pawpaw fruit!
Plantae: Magnoliophyta: Magnoliopsida: Magnoliales: Annonaceae: Asimina: Asimina triloba Linnaeus, Dunal What do you get when you cross the taste of a banana with the look and texture of a mango? A pawpaw fruit! Believe it or not, the tropical-looking pawpaw tree, which is native to North America, gives the largest tree berry in all of…
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89/150: Bizarre parenting brought to you by the Bot Fly
Animalia: Arthropoda: Insecta: Diptera: Oestridae: Cuterebra: Cuterebra fontinella (Clark, 1827) Nothing says parenting like leaving your young in the flesh of mammals to grow up. Members of the genus Cuterebra can be found parasitizing different hosts, but they all share the same process of parasitism. Adult bot flies are non-feeding with vestigial mouthparts that evolution…
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79/150: Flying, with its legs! – The Phantom Crane fly
Animalia: Arthropoda: Insecta: Diptera: Ptychopteridae: Bittacomorpha clavipes (Fabricus, 1781) No, that’s not a giant black mosquito. The Ptychopteridae family, (phantom crane flies), are a small family of Nemotocera (“longhorned flies”) related to mosquitos, true crane flies and blackflies. A common North American species, Bittacomorpha clavipes, is found east of the Rocky Mountains.
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Microscope Imaging And Plankton Sampling
After completing the imaging for the Saudi Arabian specimens, we are starting the next material in our queue, the Argentina, Russia, and Costa Rica Global Malaise Projects.
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Beetle or Fly? Why not both?
I have been busy in the archive, working on many different projects, but the most recent thing that has interested me while working at BIO has been the beetle fly.