Large peat hover fly
| Large peat hover fly | ||||||||||||
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Great peat hover fly ( Sericomyia silentis ), ♂ |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Sericomyia silentis | ||||||||||||
| ( Harris , 1776) |
The large peat hover fly or yellow ribbon peat hover fly ( Sericomyia silentis ) is a fly from the family of the hover flies (Syrphidae). Ironically, despite its scientific name (silentis = silent), the yellow banded peat hover fly is one of the singing hover flies . Both sexes can make loud buzzing sounds while flying to drive bees away from the flowers.
features
The flies reach a length of 14 to 18 millimeters and have a stocky build. The forehead, which is clearly furrowed in the middle, is black, in the male it is yellow, in the female it is gray. The antennae are reddish brown and have long, feathery bristles. The yellow, drawn-down face with a black center line and the forehead have yellow hair, the cheeks are black. The hairless compound eyes are close together in the males, but clearly separated in the females. The thorax is shiny black, the shoulder callouses lying on the side are covered with yellow powder. The mesonotum is yellow on the front, black hair on the back. The black to reddish-yellow scutellum is black in the middle and hairy yellow at the back. The abdomen is black and has three broad, yellow, in the middle finely interrupted black bars. The rear edge of the fourth tergite is yellow, in the females the fifth and sixth tergite are completely yellow, this distinguishes the species from Sericomyia lappona , in which the end of the abdomen is black. The color of the abdomen makes it easy to confuse the species with species of the genus Chrysotoxum , but these can be differentiated by means of the antennae. The legs are reddish yellow, the femora are black at the base, as are the second end members of the tarsi . The trochanters on the hind legs have a pointed hump, the femur and tibia are thickened in the male. The wings are transparent, they are only slightly darkened at the tip. The wing veins are black.
Occurrence
The species is distributed holarctic . It lives in swampy and boggy habitats in the low and high mountains, in raised bogs in the lowlands as well as on rivers, in forests and clearings. It flies from May to October.
Way of life
The adults are persistent fliers who visit different and far apart biotopes within a height of 3 meters. To rest, they spread their wings halfway. They are flower visitors on umbellifers, heather , privet, thistle and rowan. The whitish-colorless larvae have a breathing tube and a protruding last abdominal segment that is longer than the rest of the body. They develop as rat tail larvae in boggy soil, peat-containing waters, humus-containing mud, wet bark, but also in moist sawdust (saprophage). The species is oligovoltine with 2 generations a year.
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 .
- Kurt Kormann: Hover flies and bubble-head flies of Central Europe . Fauna Naturführer Volume 1, Fauna-Verlag, Nottuln 2002, ISBN 3-935980-29-9
- Speight, MCD, Castella, E., Sarthou, J.-P. & Monteil, C. (eds.): Syrph the Net on CD, Issue 7. The database of European Syrphidae. ISSN 1393-4546 . Syrph the Net Publications, Dublin.
- van Veen, MP Hoverflies of Northwest Europe KNNV Publishing 2004, ISBN 978-90-5011-199-7 .
- Reemer, M., Willem Renema, Wouter van Steenis, Theo Zeegers, Aat Barendregt, John T. Smit, Mark P. van Veen, Jeroen van Steenis en Laurens JJM van der Leij. De Nederlandse two birds . Nederlandse Fauna 8, ISBN 9789050112901 , EIS Nederland & Naturalis, 2009, 450 p
