Big hover fly
| Big hover fly | ||||||||||||
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Great hover fly ( Syrphus ribesii ), female |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Syrphus ribesii | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The great hover fly or common garden hover fly ( Syrphus ribesii ) is a species of the genus Syrphus from the family of the hover flies (Syrphidae).
features
The large hover fly reaches a body length of 10 to 12 millimeters. Her forehead is flat and black in color, above the antennae it is rust-red. The compound eyes are hairless, which distinguishes them from the similar hairy hover fly ( Syrphus torvus ). The yellow mesonotum on the sides has poorly recognizable longitudinal lines. The label is hairy yellow and black. The abdomen is colored alternately black and yellow, the first yellow band is interrupted in the middle, the following become narrower towards the middle. The wings are tinted light brown. The legs are yellow, only in the males the hind legs are dark at the base.
Occurrence and way of life
The animals occur in Europe and Asia , east to Japan and also in the Nearctic . You can find them in almost all biotopes. The species flies in several generations from April to October. The larvae are predatory and feed on aphids . They eat about 150 lice a day.
swell
- Gerald Bothe: Hoverflies. 8th revised edition. German Youth Association for Nature Observation, Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-923376-07-3 .
- Joachim Haupt, Hiroko Haupt: Flies and Mosquitoes. Observation, way of life. Naturbuch-Verlag, Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-89440-278-4 .
- Nature in NRW
