17 Tuesday Jan 2023
Posted in insects
≈ Comments Off on Nemorilla floralis
Another day, another summer fly. This one, from last May, is a little bristly beauty called Nemorilla floralis, whose name means something like ‘little visitor to the flowery glade’ (according to a tweet by @ivysuckle). Unfortunately, this fly doesn’t live up to its pretty name as it’s a parasitoid, laying its eggs in the living larvae of various micro moths and butterflies.
10 Tuesday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Flies are fascinating!
This bristle-backed orange-and-black beauty, Tachina fera, is commonly seen in Wales and England any time between May and October. These flies produce two broods over the summer months but their life cycle is perhaps not what you might think. Like almost 300 other fly species in Britain, these are parasitoids – the eggs they lay on plant leaves hatch as larvae that burrow their way inside the bodies of other larvae, the caterpillars of several species of moth, which they then proceed to eat to death. It’s a larvae-eat-larvae world out there, folks.
