{"id":12444,"date":"2021-09-08T09:15:03","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T14:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=12444"},"modified":"2021-09-08T09:20:40","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T14:20:40","slug":"have-you-seen-this-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/have-you-seen-this-fly\/","title":{"rendered":"Have you seen this fly???"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Howdy, BugFans,<\/p>\n<p>The BugLady was poking around in a wetland toward the end of May when the Black Chokeberry (<em>Aronia melanocarpa<\/em>) was in bloom. As she photographed its flower, a syrphid fly or two buzzed in. Any flower shot is enhanced by having an insect in it, right?<\/p>\n<p>Syrphid\/Flower\/Hover flies (family Syrphidae) are the often-tiny, usually-black-and-yellow bee mimics that perch lightly on or hover above flowers. Some wear patterns that are amazingly etched (an \u201cup-side\u201d of photography is that instead of a fleeting glance, the BugLady gets to put their pictures on the screen and enjoy the intricate tracery: <a href=\"https:\/\/bugguide.net\/node\/view\/2023052\/bgimage\">[1] <i class=\"fa fa-external-link\"><\/i><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/bugguide.net\/node\/view\/1611313\/bgpage\">[2] <i class=\"fa fa-external-link\"><\/i><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/bugguide.net\/node\/view\/1960381\/bgimage\">[3] <i class=\"fa fa-external-link\"><\/i><\/a>). Although they are designed to look like bees, they are harmless, and they\u2019re important pollinators.<\/p>\n<p>The BugLady got pretty excited when she put the picture up on the monitor \u2013 she had never seen a black syrphid fly with white spots before.  When she revisited the wetland a week later as the chokeberry faded, she couldn\u2019t find the fly again.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out that it was a Black bog fly (<em>Parhelophilus porcus<\/em>). <em>Parhelophilus<\/em> is a small (20 species) Holarctic genus (meaning that they\u2019re found around the northern half of the globe) with 10 species in North America.  There\u2019s another, fairly similar, black and white <em>Parhelophilus<\/em> that also occurs in Wisconsin, but the rest of them are yellow and black.  Adult <em>Parhelophilus<\/em> flies are mostly recorded eating the nectar and pollen of asters and other composites, but in most of the few pictures that the BugLady could find of this fly, it was on white flowers in the viburnum and rose families. <\/p>\n<p>Parhelophilus larvae are numbered among the rat-tailed maggots; they live in shallow waters of ponds and slow streams and, typical of the tribe Eristalini, breathe through an extended siphon <a href=\"https:\/\/bugguide.net\/node\/view\/815670\">at the rear of their abdomen <i class=\"fa fa-external-link\"><\/i><\/a> as they recycle decaying vegetation with the other end.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what the BugLady found out about the Black bog fly:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is found way north, well into the Arctic. Most of the pictures on <a href=\"http:\/\/bugguide.net\">bugguide.net <i class=\"fa fa-external-link\"><\/i><\/a> were taken in New Brunswick. It\u2019s on the Finnish iNaturalist site, and there were some Russian hits.<\/li>\n<li>It is a pollinator and recycling agent whose presence indicates a healthy bog.<\/li>\n<li><u>The Aquatic Insects of Michigan<\/u> lists it as being \u201cwidespread\u201d in Wisconsin, and while it may be widespread, it is in fact a rare, habitat specialist here.<\/li>\n<li>The same source says that \u201c<em>the systematics of the family are in flux<\/em>.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The larva of the Black bog fly has not been identified or described, nor have its habits been studied.<\/li>\n<li>It looks a whole lot like <em>Parhelophilus sibiricus<\/em>, a syrphid fly that\u2019s restricted to bogs in Siberia, and it could be the same species.<\/li>\n<li>Writing about it in 1997, researcher F. Christian Thompson tells us that \u201c<em>Most of the known sites for porcus are the typical kettlehole bogs (Bingham Pond, Wilson Mills), but some (Laurel Lake site) are better described as fens bordered by spruce, fir and hemlock \u2026\u2026&#8230; Unfortunately, for most collected specimens, no site information is available.<\/em>\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The Wisconsin Insect Research Collection contains nine specimens of the Black bog fly, all of which were collected in Door County in 1951 (thanks, BugFan PJ).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s it.<\/p>\n<p>Go outside \u2013 find cool stuff!<\/p>\n<p><em>The BugLady<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howdy, BugFans, The BugLady was poking around in a wetland toward the end of May when the Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) was in bloom. As she photographed its flower, a syrphid fly or two buzzed in. Any flower shot is &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28112,"featured_media":12448,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bug-of-the-week"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.3 (Yoast SEO v27.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Field Station<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/have-you-seen-this-fly\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Have you seen this fly???\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Howdy, BugFans, The BugLady was poking around in a wetland toward the end of May when the Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) was in bloom. 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