#drone fly

[thewolfnessphotography]

Look like a bee but it's a Drone Fly (another species of Hover flies)

[onenicebugperday]

@aldamiriel-necrococo submitted: I recently finished up installing a wildlife pond and have been finding these grey caterpillar lookin things with tails in the water! What on earth are they?

Also have been finding a bunch of eggs laid neatly in rows (unfortunately they got messed up here) in the curl of a vertical sagittaria latifolium leaf. Any idea what those could be from?

Also not an ID request, just exciting news that I saw my first damselfly visiting the pond yesterday!

Location is Chicago area in Illinois.

Ohhh wet children. They're rat-tail maggots, which are the aquatic larvae of certain drone flies and hoverflies (family Syrphidae, subfamily Eristalinae). I couldn't say which species at that stage, though. The eggs are fly eggs and they look exactly like what I'd expect the eggs from the rat-tail maggot flies to look like, so likely they're the same species. Hoverflies are great pollinators, so it's a very good thing to find! And hello to the damselfly as well :)

[reality-detective]

This doesn't löök real. Is it a "Polymer Drone Fly," being used by the U.S. military which was invented by "DARPA?"

You Decide 🤔

[dougdimmadodo]

Common Drone Fly (Eristalis tenax)

Family: Hoverfly Family (Syrphidae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Least Concern

Present and abundant on every continent except Antarctica, the Common Drone Fly is one of several hoverfly species that exhibit Batesian mimicry (a form of mimicry in which a harmless species has evolved to mimic the appearance of a toxic or otherwise dangerous species,) with its fluffy body and yellow-and-black striped abdomen giving it a bee-like appearance that deters most would-be predators despite lacking any real defensive abilities itself - upon closer inspection, it can be easily distinguished from a true bee owing to its thick body (bees have a narrow "waist" between their thorax and abdomen,) short, stubby antennae (bees generally have longer, flexible antennae) and wings (bees have 4 overlapping wings, while flies have only two wings.) Feeding on nectar and pollen, males of this species claim small flower-filled areas as their territories and guard them fiercely, hovering in mid-air to survey their surroundings and chasing off any similarly-sized insects that come close. Females travel between these territories searching for food and mates, and after mating they lay clutches of sticky oval-shaped eggs near bodies of water; the larvae, known as rat-tailed maggots, are aquatic and feed on detritus and bacteria, breathing air through an extremely long tail-like structure that extends from their abdomen. After reaching a suitable size and age the larvae crawl onto land and pupate in sheltered areas, and upon reaching adulthood they may live for several years, hibernating in rocky cracks or rotting wood to survive the winter.

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Image Source: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/55719-Eristalis-tenax

[xiphosuras]

Curiosities

[zoology-time]

Common Drone Fly, Eristalis tenax

[friendnetwork]

What a wonderful find!!!!! Eristalis tenax, the common drone fly, and one of the largest & most wide-spread bee mimic syrphid flies globally. Seen resting on an ornamental bush, and posing very nicely for me to take its photo. My iNaturalist 📸: Nikon COOLPIX L820

[faguscarolinensis]

Eristalis tenax on Prunus mume 'Kobai' / Common Drone Fly on 'Kobai' Japanese Plum Blossom at the Coker Arboretum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, NC

[take-2-the-sky]

Insects at grandpa's yard

[microecobus]

[vlkphoto]

Drone Fly .. [2 / 2]

Female Eristalis tenax busy pollinating. Brooklyn, New York City, NY.

Movie component of a livephoto. It was a windy day, and the insect was truly buzzing around. You can see just how difficult it was to capture anything at all, see contemporaneous still photo previous, which is practically miraculous in how sharp it turned out.

[bwabbitv3s]

[onenicebugperday]

@gallifreyanconsultingphilosopher​ submitted: A margined white butterfly (?), a black blister beetle, what I first thought was a party but is in fact a crowd, two hover flies (?), and a colourful fellow I couldn't for the life of me identify. Southern Alberta.

Looks like a cabbage white more than a margined white to me! And the last fellow looks like a green rose chafer, Dichelonyx backii :)

[4gifs]

125mph drone

[umblrspectrum]

for how much i love to drag pngs around, it turns out that i actually don't know how to animate all too well