06 Monday Feb 2023
Another day, another fly larva from my riffling through the leaf litter.
This was last Friday’s find, once again discovered amongst soggy Sycamore leaves. My go-to guy on Twitter tells me this is one of the Phaonia species of flies, and he wrote that this larva is ‘a ferocious predator that can be found throughout the winter in leaf litter. Goes after anything that it can pierce with its mouthparts.’ Beware ferocious fly larvae!
07 Saturday Jan 2023
Tags
fly larva, fly larva on Sycamore leaf, insects in leaf litter, Lauxaniidae, Lauxaniidae larva, leaf-turning, Sycamore leaves
During Wednesday’s walk I spent a little time turning over soggy Sycamore leaves in a small wooded area, hoping for hoverly larvae but just as keen to see what other miniscule beasties might be living in the leaf litter (there were loads). I thought I’d struck pay dirt with this find but was later advised by a hoverfly expert that this is, in fact, a fly larva, one of the Lauxaniidae family of small flies. I’d never really thought about fly larvae before and assumed, before this find, that they were all a bit like the wriggling white maggots you find on rotting meat, so this was a nice surprise. I will be turning over more leaves very soon.
11 Sunday Feb 2018
Tags
Buttercup, fly, fly larva, fly puparium, leaf mine on buttercup, leaf mine on Lesser celandine, leaf mines, leafminer, Lesser Celandine, Phytomyza ranunculi
You might think there are no insects around in winter but you’d be wrong, as I’ve been discovering in the past week or so. In my checks for blooming wildflowers, I’ve seen the odd Lesser celandine and Buttercup flower and, looking more closely at the plants, I’ve noticed leaf mines on some. And where there are leaf mines, there are insects laying eggs and larvae developing from those eggs to create the mines.
These particular mines are created by Phytomyza ranunculi, an incredibly tiny fly which I haven’t yet seen. But I have seen – and can show you here – a larva and a puparium. I brought home a couple of Lesser celandine leaves, intending to take better photos of them, but I didn’t reckon on them shrivelling up overnight. On the positive side, when I picked up one leaf, a tiny larva was sitting underneath, presumably having popped out of the leaf as it dried up.
A couple of days later I brought home another couple of leaves, for the same purpose, but this time left them in a sealed container. The next day, when I opened it, I saw this tiny speck in the bottom of the container and realised a larva from one of the leaves must have pupated. I’m trying to hatch it so I – and you – get to see the fly. Fingers crossed!
