People are familiar with flies firsthand. These annoying creatures cause them a lot of inconvenience. There are hundreds of thousands of species of similar insects in nature. The hoverfly belongs to the large family of dipterans. In the world, scientists count more than 6 thousand species, in Russia - 800. They live on all continents, with the exception of Antarctica. They are not found in the tundra and desert. The second name is syrphid, which comes from the Latin word Syrphidae.
Hover flies
One of the most useful insects in our area, which people try in every possible way to attract to their area. Externally, the striped insect is very similar to a wasp, but also has similarities with a fly.
- The abdomen is striped with a black and yellow tint, but unlike predators, yellow predominates, the stripes are narrow.
- The wings are different. They are more similar to a fly - wide, transparent. In flight they also behave differently from wasps.
There are more than 6 thousand species of hoverflies. Some strongly resemble wasps, others hornets, others bees. Distributed everywhere. In the warm season, they can be found in beds with carrots, dill, parsley, and flower beds with flowering plants. Adults feed exclusively on pollen and are one of the most important pollinators.
The parasites are the larvae. Outwardly they resemble leeches. They have no legs, are inactive, feed on aphids, insect eggs, and spider mites. During the season, huge colonies of parasites of garden, vegetable and flower crops are destroyed. An insect that looks like a wasp has nothing in common with it. But many predators try to avoid the fly.
Fighting methods
Summer residents and owners of personal plots are interested in how to get rid of pests in order to preserve their harvest. Gardeners and gardeners recommend using several methods - chemical and folk remedies. In many ways, control methods depend on the number of pests.
Chemicals
An insect similar to a fly - the hoverfly - dies from the use of such means:
- Aktara (110 rubles).
- Fly eater (10-25 rubles – 10 g packet).
- Inta-Vir (10-12 rubles).
- Tabazol (72-130 rub.).
- Agita (65 rub. – 20 g);
- Decis (36-56 rubles), etc.
Predator
A black insect that looks like a single ground wasp. The bug has an elongated body and mustache. Similarities with a wasp are found due to its striped abdomen. The upper part is covered in black, covered with wings, and wide black and yellow stripes are clearly visible below.
The predator bug itself is a predator; it easily attacks even poisonous spiders. Distributed everywhere. The brightest representatives live in tropical countries. It is active at night and remains hidden during the day.
Some species feed on the blood of humans and warm-blooded animals and are subject to destruction. Most of them attack insects and spiders. It has great endurance. It can sit in hiding for a long time, waiting for prey. As soon as he sees her, he immediately rushes to attack. Sticks the proboscis, launches a toxic substance. The poison instantly paralyzes the victim.
The same behavior is observed in road and ground wasps. These representatives of the wasp family are called predators due to the need to lay eggs in the body of the prey. The larvae dig into the belly and eat away from the inside. Until the end of the cycle, only the shell remains of the beetle, spider, and large larvae.
Harvesting spider
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Hay-making spiders that build trapping webs are ubiquitous. Hanging upside down on their jumbled, tangled, uneven web. Webs are built in dark, damp niches of caves, trees and under stones, in lairs abandoned by mammals, for example, in cellars and various buildings. In human homes, they love dry and warm places near windows. How dangerous are harvest spiders to humans? Suffice it to say that they spend the poison they have exclusively on their victims, inflicting a paralyzing bite on them. He is not enough for anything more. The main reason for declaring war on arachnids is arachnophobia. Some people cannot even stand them visually; for others, a creature that gets on their body causes panic. The problem is so serious that psychologists are working on it.
Glass butterflies
An insect that looks like a wasp with a long body may be a butterfly. The external similarities are striking. A distinctive feature is the wide transparent wings with a pronounced pattern in the form of oblong lines. The body is large, massive, similar to a large wasp. Colored in yellow and black wide stripes. Long, curled antennae are clearly visible on the head.
Glass butterflies
The flight is different. The butterfly flutters easily, does not make sudden movements, and does not create buzzing sounds, as is typical of wasps.
The most common types of glass butterflies in countries with temperate climates are currant, poplar, and apple. It is a typical representative of garden pests. The eggs hatch into caterpillars that feed on the insides of the shoots. They penetrate into the stems, under the bark. Glassworts are difficult to notice and remove, and cause great harm to gardening. The wasp is exclusively associated with similar colors.
Bee
Insects similar to wasps are bees. They are extremely often confused with each other. A bee and a wasp have some similarities in their lifestyle, they even sting just as painfully. The bee has a round shape, the head and chest are gray-black with thick, long yellow hairs. Massive paws, long whiskers are clearly visible. A striking distinctive feature is the absence of a “wasp waist” - a thin bridge between the chest and abdomen. The color is yellow-black, but the stripes are narrower and covered with yellow hairs.
Bees feed exclusively on nectar and form honeycombs from wax, which they produce themselves. Thanks to their ability to reproduce honey, they have long been domesticated and live in beehives. They are periodically attacked by the wasp family. This fact refutes the statement that wasps do not attack their own kind. The similarity in color must be explained by something else
Rider
An insect with a long body and a sting makes many puzzle over the name of this creature. The wasps are solitary wasps. They do not build typical nests and do not swarm. Distributed everywhere, including many genera and species. They differ in color and body length. Some have no wings at all, more like an ant.
The most striking representative is the equestrian with a long tail. An elongated black body, high limbs, narrow wings, and a sting. Unlike other wasps, ichneumon wasps use a sting to lay eggs. They pierce the victim’s body, inject poison, and lay their offspring. This is where the female's mission ends. The larvae develop independently. The victims include spiders, beetles, butterflies, and larvae of large insects.
Red Reaper Ant: 3.0
The red harvester ant provides a great service to farmers as it eats many pests. These ants have a nearly square head with a relatively long body without a spine, and their reddish-orange color distinguishes them from other ant species. The positive thing is that they attack rather reluctantly, although they do have a painful sting. Schmidt describes the sting from these ants as bold and relentless, and the bite feels like drilling out an ingrown toenail. According to the Pain Index, the pain of a red harvester ant bite is 3.0.
Longhorn beetle
Imitates the color of Plagionotonus wasps, a representative of longhorned beetles. Outwardly it resembles a bug. Hard chitinous cover, oblong body, head clearly visible, very long, curled mustache. There are no transparent wings, the insect rarely flies. Color black and yellow with stripes.
The body length of an adult reaches 22 mm. The female lays eggs in the wood. During its entire life it reproduces about 100 thousand of its own kind. The larvae gnaw through numerous tunnels and damage the tree. Transformation into an adult takes a long time - up to 10 years. A typical representative of pests with which humans wage a merciless fight.
An insect that closely resembles wasps is a representative of the same family - the hornet. The largest species, characterized by aggressive behavior. Destroys wasp and bee hives. The size of the body reaches 3 cm, the average wasp is 1.5 cm. Massive body, powerful jaws, strong limbs. The giant wasp bites painfully and the venom causes severe allergies.
Wasps are unique insects whose lifestyle, behavior, and physiological abilities are a constant object of study. Insects that have external similarities with them are no longer similar.
Record breaking insects
The fighter fly is the undisputed record holder among dipterans, but it is found only in South America. On the Eurasian continent, and particularly in Russia, there are other large flies:
- horse bloodsucker;
- ktyr;
- gadfly;
- bullfly.
- great gray horsefly
- bulldog fly
Important: unlike the fighter fly, representatives found in Russia pose a danger to humans and animals
Horse bloodsucker
The insect is also known as Hippobosca equina. An adult reaches 12 mm (most often 8.5 mm). The body is flattened, like all bloodsuckers. The color of the insect is brown with pale yellow spots on the back and abdomen. The wings are small but strong. On the head are dark brown compound eyes and powerful jaws comparable to small knives.
The adult sheds its wings after attacking an animal or person. A pest bite causes:
- skin irritation;
- pain;
- discomfort.
Important: the fly attacks only during the mating season, the rest of the time it feeds on nectar or pollen
Ktyr
Fly ktyr
A representative of this species can be found everywhere, with the exception of Antarctica. The fly is a predator-exterminator of various insects (flies, beetles, wasps, butterflies, grasshoppers, beetles), which sometimes provides a great service to humans.
It is distinguished by its large size (5-8 cm), strong body, strong limbs with spines, and a rigid proboscis. A characteristic feature of the structure of the imago is a large mesothorax and an elongated abdomen. The predator is black in color; sometimes there are species with brown, reddish or red sclerites. The entire body of the individual is covered with gray pollen; there are also specimens with a pattern of light stripes or spots. On the large head there are a compound eye, three simple ocelli and short antennae.
Great gray horsefly Tabanus autumnalis Linnaeus
Great gray horsefly Tabanus autumnalis Linnaeus
A large, well-recognized fly whose body length reaches 16-23 mm. Quite often, such horseflies are mistaken for gadflies, although the latter are representatives of the superfamily Oestroidea. The insect has a dark gray color, a black abdomen with a clearly recognizable pattern.
Females suck the blood of mammals and are capable of attacking humans. Before landing on their prey, they circle over it for a long time. Males of the large fly lead a vegetarian lifestyle, feeding exclusively on flower nectar. The insect is a carrier of very dangerous infections, such as anthrax.
You can meet such a fly in Europe, North Africa, Western Siberia, Asia, the Caucasus and Kazakhstan.
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Gadfly
There are 176 species of gadflies on earth. All of them have a massive body up to 30 mm long. Color depends on the species. There may be dense hairs on the body. On the head there are huge eyes consisting of 2500 facets. The wings have a characteristic pattern.
The adult lays eggs through a bite. The carriers are domestic and wild animals, as well as humans. The larvae live under the skin of the victim. It comes out only at the moment of pupation.
Important: a pest bite leads to serious consequences
Bullfly
An adult reaches 25 mm. The body of the insect is round and compacted. The back of the pest is dark gray. The abdomen is yellow with black stripes. There are large compound eyes on the head. In males they close. The wings located on the back are strong and have a characteristic pattern.
Females feed on blood:
- cattle;
- horses;
- large animals.
The food of males is nectar.
Bulldog fly
Bulldog fly
Another unpleasant insect is the Horsefly fly, also known as the bulldog fly. In Russia it is known as the gadfly.
Not only the size of the insects is impressive (their body length can reach 3-4 cm), but also their rather powerful shell. The bite of a gadfly is unpleasant and quite painful. Most often, cattle become victims of a bloodsucker attack; humans can also suffer. Thanks to their powerful mandibles, the flies' jaws exert strong pressure on the skin, cutting it like a knife.
Very often, these flies gather in a swarm and feed together, so if such a swarm attacks a clumsy animal, then the chances of driving away the bloodsuckers are almost negligible.
Fly like a wasp
Hoverflies (lat. Syrphidae) are often found in vegetable gardens and summer cottages, where they actively pollinate flowers on garden and fruit crops.
They are called hoverflies due to the sounds they make when flying, similar to the murmur of running water.
They are widespread and are found on all continents at positive air temperatures. According to biological classification, scientists place them in the order of short-whiskers and the family of Diptera.
Syrphids use a remarkable ability for mimicry, having an appearance very similar to the stinging insects of bees and wasps, having the same yellow and black striped abdomen, as seen in the photo of the hoverfly, thanks to which they escape from the attacks of birds and predators. Hoverflies are virtuosos in the “flight” business: their ability to hover or loiter in one place, and then break off and quickly fly away, is their distinctive feature. It is due to the unique structure of the wings: one pair is normal, and the second has been reduced over time into club-shaped halteres, which helps the insect maintain balance and control stopping in flight.
Bite
Each wasp has fairly powerful jaws called “mandibles.” They are used both for feeding on a variety of plant foods and for killing caught prey. For example, in the vast majority of cases, hornets, which attack even large insects like praying mantises and cockroaches, practically do not use a sting, but can simply use strong jaws, crushing the chitinous covers of their victim.
The wasp moves quite quickly, but at the same time it has far from the highest speed among insects, as a result of which even well-armed predators often end up being victims themselves. In particular, dragonflies and predatory duck flies feed on them.
Types of hoverflies
Such striped flies have many varieties: in the world - up to 60 thousand, in Russia their number is 800. All types of hoverflies are distinguished by the different arrangement of yellowish and black stripes, as well as the diet of their larvae: some of them are herbivores, others are predators, still others eat tree bark.
The most common of them:
- The common hoverfly or flower fly with yellow stripes, reaches 12 mm in length, is a good pollinator, the larvae of which destroy garden pests;
- Onion hoverfly (Delia antique) – its size is about 1 cm, the larvae feed on the juice and pulp of bulbous plants;
- Wasp fly (Temnostoma vespiform) - a fly similar to a wasp in coloring and body shape, size up to 18 mm, its larvae consume rotten wood;
- The tenacious bee fly (Eristalis tenax) is a fly similar to a bee, 15 mm long, darker in color;
- Aquatic hoverfly or eristalis fly (Eristalis) - lives near standing ponds, swamps or puddles with musty water, has a special proboscis for breathing in order to consume air from the surface;
- Tufted hoverfly wasp (fasciolatum).
Distribution[edit | edit code ]
Hornets live mainly in the Northern Hemisphere. The most famous is the common hornet ( Vespa crabro
), common in Europe (north to the 60-64th parallel). This is the only species that lives in North America, Ukraine and the European part of Russia (except for remote areas of the Far North). In the east, the range of this species extends to the Urals, Western Siberia (found in the vicinity of Oktyabrsky, Khanty-Mansiysk, Surgut and Nefteyugansk). In Central Siberia it occurs north to the lower reaches of the Angara River; also common in Transbaikalia and throughout the Amur and Primorye regions; also lives in the south of Sakhalin. In Asia, the common hornet also lives in northern Kazakhstan, Mongolia, as well as in the northwestern and eastern parts of China, Korea and Japan. In a number of areas it is endangered and needs protection. The common hornet was introduced into North America by accident in the middle of the 19th century, where it lives today at approximately the same latitudes as in Europe, but has never been found in the western part of North America.
Throughout tropical Asia, as well as in France and Spain, Asian predatory wasps ( Vespa velutina)
), building nests openly on tree branches and hunting bees.
On the territory of Russia there are 8 species of hornets: the widespread common hornet ( Vespa crabro
), oriental hornet (
Vespa orientalis
) – Eastern Caucasus and 6 species in the south of the Russian Far East –
Vespa simillima
,
Vespa dybowskii
(Dybovsky's black cuckoo hornet, the females of which invade the nests of other hornet species, for example, the common hornet),
Vespa ducalis
,
Vespa mandarinia
,
Vespa analis
,
Vespa binghami
(Bingham's hornet with nocturnal activity).
Nutrition and life cycle
Along with bees and bumblebees, syrphid flies are pollinators and feed on nectar and pollen collected from plants and flowers. The sugar consumed from such food gives them the necessary energy, and pollen is needed in the form of protein for egg maturation and reproduction. They give preference to umbelliferous and asteraceous plants; they fly in meadows, visiting dandelions and other flowers, also among fruit bushes and trees.
The first appearance of adult flies occurs at the end of spring; mating usually occurs only in July, but the active summer will continue until the first half of August.
Adult female flies, similar to bees, when laying eggs, look for places where there will be rich food for future offspring, for example, a cluster of aphids or small spider mites. Hoverfly larvae appear after 3-4 days, their length is usually about 1 cm, and they look like maggots. They hardly move, but actively eat aphids; their daily diet is up to 200 individuals, due to which they gradually grow.
During its development, each larva is capable of absorbing up to 2 thousand small insect pests, making it a predator that benefits garden plants. However, some types of flies also have plant tastes. The onion hoverfly, for example, eats onion greens, which is why it is classified as a pest.
Gradually, the grown larva forms into a puparium - a shell similar to a drop of resin, inside which the insect matures. The adult flies out of the cocoon, after 12-14 days, after 1-2 hours it spreads its wings and is able to fly.
One female hoverfly lays about 200 white eggs per season, attaching them to grass or plant stems, or less often directly into the soil. Then generations change.
Silverfish (common silverfish)
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You may have once seen them in the bathroom or toilet if you went there in the middle of the night (when the light is turned on, they quickly run away). Those thin, silvery, small things on the floor? Do you remember? They are called silverfish. Like most of the other creatures on this list, silverfish pose no real harm to us and they don't bite. Cases of contact did not reveal any negative impact on human health. They feed on products of plant origin containing starch or polysaccharides; but they may not eat anything for months. Their diet may include sugar, flour, glue, book binding, paper, photographs, starchy fabrics. From storage areas they can be brought into the home through the purchase of toilet paper or cartons of paper napkins. They are harmless to humans and pets and are not carriers of diseases, but can damage damp paper. Their scientific name is “common silverfish” (lat. Lepisma saccharina). It is believed that the silverfish is one of the oldest living insects - its ancestors lived on Earth more than 300 million years ago, back in the Paleozoic era. Silverfish prefer damp and dark places; if the house is dry and light, then there will be no silverfish there.
Features of the genus
So who are the hornets? The genus Hornets belongs to the family of true wasps. That is why representatives of this genus fit well into the external framework inherent in ordinary wasps. At the same time, there are some differences that will not allow these, albeit close, but still different taxonomic groups of Hymenoptera insects, to be confused.
What does a hornet look like next to a wasp? Large hornets differ from other wasps primarily in their large size. The dimensions of an insect such as a hornet range from 1.8 to 5.5 cm in length, depending on the species. Also, the wingspan of these largest wasps in the world can reach 8 cm. And this large wasp, in addition to its serious dimensions, has very powerful and impressive jaws, which also differs from most other wasps.
Among the differences between representatives of the hornet genus and other wasps, some differences in color should also be mentioned. The hornet insect has the same striped abdomen as most wasps. Moreover, if the color of the wasp is dominated by only two colors, namely black and yellow, then the color of the hornet is somewhat darker, and orange and brown shades have found their place in the color palette.
Well, we cannot ignore that unpleasant part of the story about this huge wasp, which concerns the main weapon of these stinging hymenoptera. It’s no secret that wasps tend to use their sting for its intended purpose in case of danger.
Although, it must be said that the wasp’s sting performs not only the function of an injection needle for treating a presumptuous enemy with a portion of poison. It is also a reduced insect ovipositor.
Therefore, such cinematic epithets as “murder hornets” are often and, it must be said, not unreasonably used in relation to these not very cocky, but certainly capable of standing up for themselves insects.
