#hairy maggot blowfly

[bugsoupforthesoul]

Omg look at this cutie fly

[drhoz]

#2115 - Chrysomya varipes - Small Hairy Maggot Blowfly

AKA Chrysomya annulipes and Lucilia varipes.

A small blowfly found over much of the Australia mainland, especially around carcasses in summer.

Chrysomya is common genus in the Old World tropics and subtropics, largely outnumbering the Calliphora and Lucilia of more temperate zones. Some species are now also found in the New World, not least because their maggots will devour the maggots of other blowflies and rapidly replace them. One particularly notorious species is the Old World screwworm fly, Chrysomya bezziana, which like several other species will deposit their young on neglected wounds and lead to fatal myiasis. Often Chrysomya is just one of the genera infesting the wound.

The larvae of Chrysomya albiceps, the related Chrysomya rufifacies, and to a lesser extent C. varipes, have fleshy projections that earned them the common name of 'hairy maggot'.

Cooma, NSW.

[edrec]

love and marriage

[edrec]

yknow for an insect with such a stunning colorscheme and adorable face, i wish they would have come up with a better name for hairy maggot blowflies :•\

[edrec]

I kno this is out of nowhere but what's ur fav bug?

ooh thank you for asking!!! it’s a toss up between these two:

Eastern tent caterpillar

(dont worry theyre safe! theyre web weaving caterpillars) 

and Hairy maggot blowflies

[drhoz]

#417 - Chrysomya rufifacies - Large Greenbottle

musewhipped in Melbourne sent me photos of  two flies to ID. I'll be reblogging her photos after this, since I don't have any shots of the species in question myself.

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EDIT - Photo below from James Niland, on Wikipedia, because the ongoing absense of a photo was annoying me and I still haven’t seen the species myself

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Chrysomya rufifacies, the Large Greenbottle, or Hairy Maggot Blowfly, is a large metallic green blowfly with a silver-white face and red eyes. It's an Australian native that has recently expanded its range to most of the world. In northern and central Florida, for example, it's one of the first flies to turn up at a human corpse, and the highly predictable lifecycle makes it extremely important in forensic entomology.

The maggots will also eat other maggots, thus controlling populations of other blowflies, but since it will attack live sheep itself as well, the benefit is dubious.