{"id":7185,"date":"2008-07-23T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T05:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=7185"},"modified":"2017-06-24T21:34:53","modified_gmt":"2017-06-25T02:34:53","slug":"tachinid-fly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/tachinid-fly\/","title":{"rendered":"Tachinid Fly (Family Tachinidae)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Howdy, BugFans,<\/p>\n

When you are scrutinizing the prairie flowers in late summer and you spy a \u201cplus-sized\u201d fly with a teeny tiny tutu, it\u2019s probably a tachinid fly. The adults are there to drink nectar, though they have an ulterior motive for visiting the flowers.<\/p>\n

\"tachinid-fly-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tachinid Flies<\/h3>\n

Tachinids are, in a sense, the cuckoos or cowbirds of the insect world. But, instead of laying their eggs in another insect\u2019s nest, they lay one to two eggs in an unsuspecting caterpillar\u2019s \u201chard-to-reach spots\u201d (along with Lepidopterans—butterflies and moths—they also target members of the True Bug family, Hemiptera). Or, they inject eggs or live maggots under their quarry\u2019s skin; mom hatches these internally, on-the-spot, when she finds a likely victim. Or, they just deposit eggs on leaves so their hosts will graze on and ingest them. Or, creepiest of all, the eggs of a few species hatch on the leaf and the maggots stalk their own potential hosts (permission to shudder). No, the Bug Lady could not possibly be making this up, although it does sound like a 1950\u2019s Japanese horror film. The prairie hosts many small and violent stories.<\/p>\n

\"tachinid-fly-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The maggots live as internal parasites, consuming their hosts\u2019 less important tissues first and not finishing off the vital organs until they are ready to pupate. The larvae leave the host and pupate on the ground. It\u2019s been said that \u201ca good parasite doesn\u2019t kill its host\u201d and one author differentiates these maggots as \u201cparasitoids.\u201d Because of this lifestyle and because of their preferred hosts, tachinids act as controls on a variety of pest insects, and some alien tachinid flies have been imported as biological controls. Alas, the one introduced to control the gypsy moth never met a caterpillar it didn\u2019t love, and it especially loves the caterpillars of Saturnid Moths—the giant silkworms, the Luna and Cecropia moths of previous Bug of the Week fame—whose numbers decline dramatically when tachinids come to town.<\/p>\n

Parasitoids 1; Biologists 0.<\/p>\n

 
\nThe BugLady<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you are scrutinizing the prairie flowers in late summer and you spy a \u201cplus-sized\u201d fly with a teeny tiny tutu, it\u2019s probably a Tachinid fly<\/strong>. Instead of laying their eggs in another insect\u2019s nest, they lay one to two eggs in an unsuspecting caterpillar\u2019s \u201chard-to-reach spots\u201d. The maggots live as internal parasites, consuming their hosts\u2019 less important tissues first and not finishing off the vital organs until they are ready to pupate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3666,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[8],"tags":[80],"class_list":["post-7185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bug-of-the-week","tag-flies"],"yoast_head":"\nField 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\/tachinid-fly\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tachinid Fly (Family Tachinidae)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When you are scrutinizing the prairie flowers in late summer and you spy a \u201cplus-sized\u201d fly with a teeny tiny tutu, it\u2019s probably a Tachinid fly. 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