Tag: fly
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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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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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22/150: Stalk-eyed flies, where hypercephaly is sexy!
Animalia: Arthropoda: Insecta: Diptera: Diopsidae: Sphyracephala: Sphyracephala subbifasciata (Fitch, 1855) Sphyracephala subbifasciata is one of two species found in Canada from the family Diopsidae (Diptera). Their common name, stalk-eyed flies, comes from the presence of their eyes at the end of an elongated stalk, giving them the look of a drastically long hammerhead.
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Busy Barcoding Bees Building Blitzes
Hello again faithful readers, It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog, and a lot has happened! I’m sure you know all about the 6th Barcode of Life Conference that happened a few weeks ago from the other blogs, but I’ll give you a bit of a refresher. It was busy, crowded with fervent biologists,…
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Aquatic and Worm Sampling in Bruce Peninsula National Park
After a successful week of sampling at Long Point Provincial Park, the BIObus was off to Bruce Peninsula National Park. The Bruce Peninsula divides Georgian Bay from the main basin of Lake Huron, and has some very unique aquatic ecosystems where interesting species can be found. We sampled a variety of these habitats which included…
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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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Exposing Kinaskan
Hello Blog followers, it is I, Martin, your humble BIObus crew member here to enthrall you with yet another gripping regalement of our adventures around Northern British Columbia. If you are following these blogs with the weekly hunger that draws you back to read these blogs for every post you may remember that last week…
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Collecting!… I can at Kinaskan
So it has been a somewhat interesting past week, with some unexpected bumps in the road. During our time at the beautiful Kluane National Park, I started to notice a little sore spot in my mouth. To be more specific the gum area around one of my wisdom teeth. However this did not really bother…