Common shadow hover fly
| Common shadow hover fly | ||||||||||||
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Common shadow hover fly ( Baccha elongata ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Baccha elongata | ||||||||||||
| ( Fabricius , 1775) |
The common shadow hover fly or light needle hover fly ( Baccha elongata ) is a fly from the family of the hover flies (Syrphidae).
features
The flies reach a body length of 7 to 11 millimeters. Similar to certain clay wasps, their abdomen is very slim and thickened at the end in a club-shaped manner. The head and thorax shine black, the dark mesonotum has a greenish-metallic sheen. The abdomen is black and has yellow spots on the third and fourth segments. The face is yellow or white at the edge of the mouth, the forehead and the parting have light hair. The forehead is dull gray in the males, in the females it is dull gray above the antennae and above it is dull gray with a black central stripe. The antennae are black-brown, their third link is yellowish on the underside. The legs are brownish-yellow, in isolated cases the rear pair of legs can also be brown. The species can only be confused with the very similar Baccha obscuripennis , the males of which have no light hair on the forehead.
Occurrence
The animals are found in the Holarctic and are rarer at higher altitudes than in the lowlands. They live primarily in shady and humid habitats, especially in forests and close to bodies of water, and fly in two generations from April to October.
Way of life
The males are persistent fliers and can stay in the air for hours, the females, on the other hand, are flight lazy and usually stay on leaves or grass in the undergrowth. The larvae live in the woods growing herbaceous plants zoophag of leaf and scale insects .
swell
- Gerald Bothe: Hoverflies. German Youth Association for Nature Observation , Hamburg 1996.
- Joachim & Hiroko Haupt: Flies and mosquitoes: observation, way of life. Naturbuch-Verlag, Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-89440-278-4 .
