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52-553: Phthiriinae is a subfamily of bee flies in the family Bombyliidae . There are about 11 genera and more than 120 described species in Phthiriinae. These 11 genera belong to the subfamily Phthiriinae: Data sources: i = ITIS, c = Catalogue of Life, g = GBIF, b = Bugguide.net This article related to members of the fly family Bombyliidae is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Bee fly Phthiriidae Usiidae Systropodidae The Bombyliidae are

104-549: A family of flies , commonly known as bee flies . Some are colloquially known as bomber flies . Adults generally feed on nectar and pollen , some being important pollinators . Larvae are mostly parasitoids of other insects. The Bombyliidae are a large family of flies comprising hundreds of genera , but the life cycles of most species are known poorly, or not at all. They range in size from very small (2 mm in length) to very large for flies (wingspan of some 40 mm). When at rest, many species hold their wings at

156-490: A nauplius , which is characterized by its use of antennae for swimming. Barnacles , a highly modified crustacean, use their antennae to attach to rocks and other surfaces. The second antennae in the burrowing Hippoidea and Corystidae have setae that interlock to form a tube or "snorkel" which funnels filtered water over the gills. Some claim insects evolved from prehistoric crustaceans, and they have secondary antennae like crustaceans, but not primary antennae. Antennae are

208-402: A burrow passes scrutiny then the bee fly may proceed to land and insert its posterior abdomen into the soil, laying one or more eggs at the edge or in close vicinity to it. In nine subfamilies including the more frequently observable Bombyliinae and Anthracinae, the females often do not land at all during host burrow inspections, and will proceed to release their eggs from midair by quick flicks of

260-427: A characteristic "swept back" angle. Adults generally feed on nectar and pollen , some being important pollinators , often with spectacularly long proboscises adapted to plants such as Lapeirousia species with very long, narrow floral tubes. Unlike butterflies, bee flies hold their proboscis straight, and cannot retract it. Many Bombyliidae superficially resemble bees and accordingly the prevalent common name for

312-442: A characteristically cautious approach of a possible feeding or landing site. Bombyliids are often recognizable by their stocky shapes, by their hovering behavior, and for the particular length of their mouthparts and/or legs as they lean forward into flowers. Unlike hoverflies, which settle on the flower as do bees and other pollinating insects, those bee fly species which have a long proboscis generally feed while continuing to hover in

364-514: A context-specific flight pattern and wingbeat pitch of the male, with or without repeated proboscis contact between male and female. Males often seek out smaller or larger clearings on the ground, presumably in vicinity of flowering plants or host nesting habitats that are likely attractive to females. They can return to their chosen perch or patch after every feeding bout or after pursuit of other insects flying over, or they can instead survey their chosen territory while hovering one or more meters above

416-406: A diverticulum is present in the eighth urite, in which the eggs are mixed with sand before being deposited. The wing venation , although variable within the family, has some common characteristics that can be summarized basically in the particular morphology of the branches of the radial sector and the reduction of the forking of the media. The costa is spread over the entire margin and the subcosta

468-427: A few minutes. Close observation is often easier with feeding individuals than with flies on the ground, as the latter are especially quick to take flight at the first sight of moving silhouettes or approaching shadows. Mating behavior has only been observed in a handful of species. It can vary from fairly generic swarming or unsolicited mid-air interception, as is common in many Diptera , to courtship behavior involving

520-419: A host plant's taste and odor. After the desired taste and odor has been identified, the female moth will deposit her eggs onto the plant. Giant swallowtail butterflies also rely on antenna sensitivity to volatile compounds to identify host plants. It was found that females are actually more responsive with their antenna sensing, most likely because they are responsible for oviposition on the correct plant. In

572-517: A member of the family is bee fly . Possibly the resemblance is Batesian mimicry , affording the adults some protection from predators . The larval stages are predators or parasitoids of the eggs and larvae of other insects. The adult females usually deposit eggs in the vicinity of possible hosts, quite often in the burrows of beetles or wasps /solitary bees. Although insect parasitoids usually are fairly host-specific, often highly host-specific, some Bombyliidae are opportunistic and will attack

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624-525: A patchy fossil record, with species being known from a handful of localities, the oldest known species are known from the Middle Cretaceous Burmese amber , around 99 million years old. Although the morphology of beeflies varies in detail, adults of most bee flies are characterized by some morphological details that make recognition easy. The dimensions of the body vary, depending on the species, from 1.0 mm to 2.5 cm. The form

676-440: A raised portion of the insect's head capsule. The socket is closed off by the membrane into which the base of the scape is set. However, the antenna does not hang free on the membrane, but pivots on a rigidly sprung projection from the rim of the torulus. That projection on which the antenna pivots is called the antennifer . The whole structure enables the insect to move the antenna as a whole by applying internal muscles connected to

728-444: A short distance Consequently, the cell cup may be open or closed. Hoverflies of the family Syrphidae often mimic Hymenoptera as well, and some syrphid species are hard to tell apart from Bombyliidae at first glance, especially for bee fly species that lack a long proboscis or long, thin legs. Such bombyliids can still be distinguished in the field by anatomical features such as: The larvae of most bee flies are of two types. Those of

780-468: A unit, in spite of being articulated. However, some funicles are complex and very mobile. For example, the Scarabaeidae have lamellate antennae that can be folded tightly for safety or spread openly for detecting odours or pheromones . The insect manages such actions by changes in blood pressure, by which it exploits elasticity in walls and membranes in the funicles, which are in effect erectile. In

832-456: A variety of hosts. The Bombyliidae include at least 4,500 described species, and certainly thousands more remain to be described. However, most species do not often appear in abundance, and compared to other major groups of pollinators they are much less likely to visit flowering plants in urban parks or suburban gardens. As a result, this is arguably one of the most poorly known families of insects relative to its species richness. The family has

884-421: Is a parasite of tiger beetle larvae, and A. trifasciata is a parasite of the wall bee. Several African species of Villa and Thyridanthrax are parasitic pupae of tsetse flies . Villa morio is parasitic on the beneficial ichneumonid species Banchus femoralis . The larvae of Dipalta are parasitic on antlions . The behavior of known forms is similar to that of the larvae of Nemestrinoidea :

936-404: Is assumed to improve the female's aim as well as the egg's survival chances by adding weight, slowing down egg dehydration, masking biochemical cues that could trigger host behavior such as nest cleaning or abandonment - or a combination of all three. Despite the high number of species of this family, the biology of juveniles of most species is poorly understood. The postembryonic development is of

988-423: Is considered segmented if each of the annuli is separate from those around it and has individual muscle attachments. Flagellate antennae, on the other hand, have muscle attachments only around the base, acting as a hinge for the flagellum —a flexible string of annuli with no muscle attachment. There are several notable non-sensory uses of antennae in crustaceans. Many crustaceans have a mobile larval stage called

1040-412: Is long, often ending on the distal half of the costal margin. The radius is almost always divided into four branches, with fusion of the branches R 2 and R 3, and is characterized by the sinuosity of the end portions of the branches of the radial sector. The venation presents a marked simplification compared to other Asiloidea and, in general, to other lower Brachycera. M 1 is always present and converges on

1092-595: Is often compact and the integument is usually covered with dense and abundant hair. The coloration is usually inconspicuous and colours such as brown, blackish- grey, and light colors like white or yellow predominate. Many species are mimics of apoid Hymenoptera . In other species patches of flattened hairs occur that can act as silvery, gilded or copper-tone reflecting mirrors; these perhaps serve as visual signals in conspecific mate/rival recognition, or perhaps imitate reflecting surface particles on bare soils with high content of materials like quartz, mica or pyrite. The head

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1144-430: Is round, with a convex face, often holoptic in males. The antennae are of the type aristate composed of three to six segments, with the third segment larger than the others; the stylus is absent (antenna of three segments) or is composed of one to three flagellomeres (antenna of four to six segments). The mouthparts are modified for sucking and adapted for feeding on flowers. The length varies considerably: for example,

1196-424: Is uncertain. In the past, 31 subfamilies were well defined, but the family is thought to be polyphyletic ( sensu lato ). In the 1980s and '90s, the family has undergone several revisions: Webb (1981) finally moved the genus Hilarimorpha into their own family ( Hilarimorphidae ). Zaitzev (1991) moved the genus Mythicomyia and several other minor genera in the family Mythicomyiidae , Yeates (1992, 1994) shifted

1248-479: The Coleoptera and Hymenoptera. They are important for insects like ants that follow scent trails, for bees and wasps that need to "sniff" the flowers that they visit, and for beetles such as Scarabaeidae and Curculionidae that need to fold their antennae away when they self-protectively fold up all their limbs in defensive attitudes. Because the funicle is without intrinsic muscles, it generally must move as

1300-585: The Hexapoda , both Collembola and Diplura have antenna, but Protura do not. Antennal fibrillae play an important role in Culex pipiens mating practices. The erection of these fibrillae is considered to be the first stage in reproduction. These fibrillae serve different functions across the sexes. As antennal fibrillae are used by female C. pipiens to locate hosts to feed on, male C. pipiens utilize them to locate female mates. The three basic segments of

1352-442: The antennal lobe in the brain . From there, neurons in the antennal lobes connect to mushroom bodies that identify the odour. The sum of the electrical potentials of the antennae to a given odour can be measured using an electroantennogram . In the monarch butterfly , antennae are necessary for proper time-compensated solar compass orientation during migration. Antennal clocks exist in monarchs, and they are likely to provide

1404-907: The chelicerates and proturans , which have none, all non-crustacean arthropods have a single pair of antennae. Crustaceans bear two pairs of antennae. The pair attached to the first segment of the head are called primary antennae or antennules . This pair is generally uniramous, but is biramous in crabs and lobsters and remipedes . The pair attached to the second segment are called secondary antennae or simply antennae . The second antennae are plesiomorphically biramous, but many species later evolved uniramous pairs. The second antennae may be significantly reduced (e.g. remipedes) or apparently absent (e.g. barnacles ). The subdivisions of crustacean antennae have many names, including flagellomeres (a shared term with insects), annuli, articles, and segments. The terminal ends of crustacean antennae have two major categorizations: segmented and flagellate. An antenna

1456-688: The Anthracinae have short mouthparts, with the labium terminating in a large fleshy labellum; in Phthiriinae, the tube is considerably longer, and in Bombyliinae more than four times the length of the head. The legs are long and thin and the front legs are sometimes smaller and more slender than the middle and rear legs. Typically, they are provided with bristles at the apex of the tibiae, without empodia and, sometimes, also without pulvilli . The wings are transparent, often hyaline or evenly colored or with bands. The alula are well developed and in

1508-632: The abdomen while hovering over the burrow's entrance. This remarkable behavior has earned such species the colloquial name of Bomber flies , it can be seen in Roy Kleuker's online video clip in YouTube. Female flies with this remarkable oviposition strategy typically have a ventral storage structure known as a sand chamber on the posterior end of the abdomen, which is filled with sand grains gathered before egg laying. These sand grains are used to coat each egg just before their aerial release, which

1560-564: The air, rather like Sphingidae, or while touching the flower with their front legs to stabilize their position - without fully landing or ceasing oscillation of the wings. Species with shorter proboscis do land and walk on flower heads, however, and can be much harder to distinguish from hoverflies in the field. As noted, many bee fly species spend regular time intervals at rest on or near the ground, while hoverflies hardly ever do so. It can therefore be informative to watch feeding individuals and see whether or not they move down to ground level after

1612-570: The arthropod to a substrate . Larval arthropods have antennae that differ from those of the adult. Many crustaceans, for example, have free-swimming larvae that use their antennae for swimming. Antennae can also locate other group members if the insect lives in a group, like the ant . The common ancestor of all arthropods likely had one pair of uniramous (unbranched) antenna-like structures, followed by one or more pairs of biramous (having two major branches) leg-like structures, as seen in some modern crustaceans and fossil trilobites . Except for

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1664-626: 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 pollen (from which they meet their protein requirements). A similar trophic behavior occurs among the hoverflies , another important family of Diptera pollinators. As with hoverflies, bee flies are capable of sudden acceleration or deceleration, all but momentum-free high-speed changes of direction, superb control of position while hovering in mid-air, as well as

1716-413: The bare patch. Gravid females seek out nesting habitats of hosts, and can spend many minutes inspecting for example entrances of smaller burrows in soil. In some species this behavior consists of hovering and repeated split-second foreleg touches of soil near the edge of the burrow's entrance, presumably to detect biochemical clues about the burrow's constructor such as identity, recency of visiting etc. If

1768-607: The crepuscular hawk moth ( Manduca sexta ), antennae aid in flight stabilization. Similar to halteres in Dipteran insects, the antennae transmit coriolis forces through the Johnston's organ that can then be used for corrective behavior. A series of low-light, flight stability studies in which moths with flagellae amputated near the pedicel showed significantly decreased flight stability over those with intact antennae. To determine whether there may be other antennal sensory inputs,

1820-549: The entire subfamily of Proratinae, with the exception of Apystomyia , into the family of Scenopinidae and subsequently the genus Apystomyia into the family Hilarimorphidae. Nagatomi & Liu (1994) moved Apystomyia into a family of their own ( Apystomyiidae . After these revisions, the bee flies sensu stricto have a greater morphological homogeneity, but the monophyly of the family still remains dubious. Phylogenetic analysis of CAD and 28S rDNA gene sequences supports monophyly of only eight subfamilies out of fifteen included in

1872-432: The first instar larva of is a planidium while the other stages have a parasitic habitus. The eggs are laid usually in a future host or at the nest where the host develops. The planidium enters the nest and undergoes changes before starting to feed. The family is worldwide ( Palearctic realm , Nearctic realm , Afrotropical realm , Neotropical realm , Australasian realm , Oceanian realm , Indomalayan realm ), but has

1924-494: The first one or two segments of the arthropod head. They vary widely in form but are always made of one or more jointed segments. While they are typically sensory organs , the exact nature of what they sense and how they sense it is not the same in all groups. Functions may variously include sensing touch , air motion, heat, vibration (sound), and especially smell or taste . Antennae are sometimes modified for other purposes, such as mating, brooding, swimming, and even anchoring

1976-452: The first type are elongated and cylindrical in shape and have a metapneustic or amphipneustic tracheal system, provided with a pair of abdominal spiracles and, possibly, a thoracic pair. Those of the second type are stubby and eucephalic and have one pair of spiracles positioned in the abdomen. Adults favour sunny conditions and dry, often sandy or rocky areas. They have powerful wings and are found typically in flight over flowers or resting on

2028-457: The flagellum. Such groups include the Symphyla , Collembola and Diplura . In many true insects, especially the more primitive groups such as Thysanura and Blattodea , the flagellum partly or entirely consists of a flexibly connected string of small ring-shaped annuli . The annuli are not true flagellomeres, and in a given insect species the number of annuli generally is not as consistent as

2080-519: The funicle is taken to comprise the segments between the club and the pedicel. Quite commonly the funicle beyond the pedicel is quite complex in Endopterygota such as beetles, moths and Hymenoptera , and one common adaptation is the ability to fold the antenna in the middle, at the joint between the pedicel and the flagellum. This gives an effect like a "knee bend", and such an antenna is said to be geniculate . Geniculate antennae are common in

2132-465: The greatest biodiversity in tropical and subtropical arid climates. In Europe, 335 species are distributed among 53 genera. The systematics of bee flies are the most uncertain of any family of lower Brachycera. Willi Hennig (1973) placed the bee flies in the superfamily of Nemestrinoidea, on the basis of analogies in the behaviour of the larvae, positioning the superfamily in Tabanomorpha inside

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2184-516: The groups with more uniform antennae (for example: millipedes ), all segments are called antennomeres . Some groups have a simple or variously modified apical or subapical bristle called an arista (this may be especially well-developed in various Diptera ). Olfactory receptors on the antennae bind to free-floating molecules, such as water vapour , and odours including pheromones . The neurons that possess these receptors signal this binding by sending action potentials down their axons to

2236-544: The infraorder Homoeodactyla Boris Rohdendorf (1974) dealt with the family in a separate superfamily (Bombyliidea), linking it to the superfamily of Asilidea. Currently the close correlation either positions the bee-flies within the superfamily Asiloidea sensu Rohdendorf (Asilidea) or they are included with the families separated by Rohdendorf in the superfamily of Asiloidea.  ? Scenopinidae and Therevidae  ? Mydidae and Apioceridae  ? Asilidae   Bombyliidae The internal systematic of bee-flies

2288-426: The margin or, sometimes, of R 5. M 2 is present and reaches the margin, or is absent. M 3 is always absent and merged with M 4. The discal cell is usually present. The branch M 3 +4 is separated from the discal cell at the distal posterior vertex, so the mid-cubital connects directly to the posterior margin of the discal cell. The cubital and anal veins are complete and end separately on the margin or converge joining for

2340-421: The number of flagellomeres in most species. In many beetles and in the chalcidoid wasps , the apical flagellomeres form a club shape, called the clava . The collective term for the segments between the club and the antennal base is the funicle ; traditionally in describing beetle anatomy, the term "funicle" refers to the segments between the club and the scape . However, traditionally in working on wasps

2392-414: The primary olfactory sensors of insects and are accordingly well-equipped with a wide variety of sensilla (singular: sensillum ). Paired, mobile, and segmented, they are located between the eyes on the forehead. Embryologically, they represent the appendages of the second head segment. All insects have antennae, however they may be greatly reduced in the larval forms. Amongst the non-insect classes of

2444-482: The primary timing mechanism for sun compass orientation. In the African cotton leafworm , antennae have an important function in signaling courtship. Specifically, antennae are required for males to answer the female mating call. Although females do not require antennae for mating, a mating that resulted from a female without antennae was abnormal. In the diamondback moth , antennae serve to gather information about

2496-426: The rest position the wings are kept open and horizontal in a V shape revealing the sides of the abdomen. The abdomen is generally short and wide, subglobose-shaped, cylindrical, or conical, composed of six to eight apparent urites. The remaining urites are part of the structure of the external genitalia. The abdomen of the females often ends with spinous processes, used in ovideposition. In Anthracinae and Bombyliinae,

2548-514: The scape. The pedicel is flexibly connected to the distal end of the scape and its movements in turn can be controlled by muscular connections between the scape and pedicel. The number of flagellomeres can vary greatly between insect species, and often is of diagnostic importance. True flagellomeres are connected by membranous linkage that permits movement, though the flagellum of "true" insects does not have any intrinsic muscles. Some other Arthropoda do however have intrinsic muscles throughout

2600-410: The study, with the Bombyliinae resolving as a highly polyphyletic group. Overall, the family includes about 4700 described species, distributed among 270 genera. The internal arrangement varies according to the source, according to the different frameworks the authors attribute to tribes and subfamilies. To divide the family, often this scheme is used: Flagellomeres Antennae are connected to

2652-634: The type hypermetamorphic , with parasitoid or hyperparasitoid larvae. Exceptions are the larvae of Heterotropinae, whose biology is similar to that of other Asiloidea, with predatory larvae that do not undergo hypermetamorphosis. Hosts of bee flies belong to different orders of insects, but mostly are among the holometabolous orders. Among these are Hymenoptera, in particular the superfamilies of Vespoidea and Apoidea , beetles, other flies, and moths. Larvae of some species including Villa sp. feed on ova of Orthoptera . Bombylius major larvae are parasitic on solitary bees including Andrena . Anthrax anale

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2704-464: The typical insect antenna are the scape or scapus (base), the pedicel or pedicellus (stem), and finally the flagellum , which often comprises many units known as flagellomeres . The pedicel (the second segment) contains the Johnston's organ which is a collection of sensory cells. The scape is mounted in a socket in a more or less ring-shaped sclerotised region called the torulus , often

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