Hedgehog fly
| Hedgehog fly | ||||||||||||
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Hedgehog fly ( Tachina fera ) |
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| Tachina fera | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1761) |
The hedgehog fly ( Tachina fera ) belongs to the family of caterpillar flies (Tachinidae).
description
The fly, like most caterpillar flies, is similar in body shape and proportions to a house fly. Their body length is about 9 to 14 millimeters and therefore large for a caterpillar fly, but as typical for parasitoids it is very variable, there are significantly smaller animals. The body is predominantly colored yellow, it has long, thorn-shaped, protruding bristles of black color and additional short, black, almost lying hair. The head is yellowish in color, it has long antennae, the greatly elongated second limb of which is colored yellow, the third, significantly shorter, is black. The antenna bristle (Arista) is very finely haired. The large, red colored complex eyes are only very finely haired. The size of the eyes in relation to the head depends on the sex, the frons between the eyes is about a third of the width of the head in the females and a quarter in the males. The palps of the mouthparts are long, thin and thread-shaped. The back of the head is dusted gray and always clearly yellowish short hairy.
The trunk (thorax) is predominantly yellow, but on the upper side it appears gray due to dense pollination, the label, on the other hand, is yellowish-brown. The legs are predominantly yellowish, in the male the thighs are mostly dark with yellow tips. The rear hips are clearly hairy on the upper side. In the clear, yellowish tinted wings, especially at the base, the large cell in the wing tip (wing cell R5) is open, which means that it reaches the edge of the wing (in many other species of caterpillar fly it only touches or is the edge at one point connected to it by a vein; "stalked"). The veins on the wings are brown-yellow. The abdomen is bright yellow, on the upper side it has a sharply defined black central stripe, which ends bluntly on the fifth tergite.
Tachina fera differs from other species of the genus Tachina by the predominantly yellow legs, the lack of yellow hair on the thorax (which gives the other species a somewhat bumblebee-like appearance), the whitish-yellow wing scales (calyptrae) and the shape of the black back stripe on the abdomen, the in most other species is rhombic or pointed at the back. However, the species are very similar to one another and somewhat variable; they cannot be determined with certainty based on the specified color characteristics alone. In addition, there is another, previously undescribed species in the species group with distribution in the higher mountain regions and in Scandinavia. A reliable identification of the males is possible based on the male mating organs (identification key in).
The strong, black bristles at the end of the body give the hedgehog fly its German name.
Ecology and way of life
The adults are flower visitors. As is typical for caterpillar flies, the larvae are parasitoids inside butterfly caterpillars. A large number of species of owl butterfly caterpillars (family Noctuidae) are specified as the host of the species , more rarely also caterpillars of bearer spiders (family Lymantriidae) the species is obviously not very host-specific, like all species of the family, the female fly does not occupy the host directly with eggs. These are placed on a leaf on a potential nutrient plant of the caterpillars, with visual (feeding damage) and chemical stimuli obviously serving as clues. The eggs are very thin-walled and contain an almost finished larva of the first stage when they are laid. A robust, heavily sclerotized larva hatches from the egg very quickly and remains motionless on the surface. If a matching caterpillar approaches, it drills (by means of the pointed labrum, supported by saliva) through the body wall into the body cavity. The larvae live in the body cavity, but maintain contact with the spirits to the outside in order to be able to inhale air. As with all caterpillar flies, there are three larval stages. The first two stages mainly absorb hemolymph, the third then also eats vital organs and thus kills the host. Pupation takes place outside the host in the litter.
Adults occur in two generations in Central Europe, the first from late April to late June, the second, usually more numerous, from mid-July to mid-October. The species occurs both in forests and in open habitats such as meadows, it is very common.
distribution
The species inhabits almost the entire Palearctic . Its large area covers Europe to the north, North Africa and North Asia, east to China, Japan and Korea.
particularities
As the fly develops in different caterpillars, it has potential economic importance in forest pest control.
Systematics
The hedgehog fly was first described by Linne as Musca fera . The genus Tachina belongs to the subfamily Tachininae , tribe Tachinini . Within the genus, Tachina fera belongs to the subgenus Eudoromyia . Together with Tachina casta and Tachina canariensis (and an as yet undescribed species) it forms the fera species group. The relationships are also checked on the basis of molecular phylogeny (using homologous DNA sequences). In older works it is often treated under the synonym Echinomyia fera , there are numerous other synonyms.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Hans-Peter Tschorsnig, Benno Herting: Die Raupenfliegen (Diptera: Tachinidae) Central Europe: Identification tables and information on the distribution and ecology of the individual species . In: Stuttgart contributions to natural history , Series A (Biology), 506, 1994, pp. 1–170.
- ↑ a b F.I. van Emden: Diptera Cyclorrhapha Calyptrata (1) Section a: Tachinidae and Calliphoridae. Handbook for the identification of British insects Vol X Part 4a . Published by the Royal Entomological Society of London, 1954.
- ↑ Joachim Haupt: Flies and Mosquitoes. Observation, way of life . Naturbuch-Verlag, Augsburg 1998. ISBN 3-89440-278-4
- ↑ N. Muráriková, J. Vanhara, A. Tóthová, J. Havel: Polyphasic approach applying artificial neural networks, molecular analysis and postabdomen morphology to West Palaearctic Tachina spp. (Diptera, Tachinidae) . In: Bulletin of Entomological Research , 101, 2011, pp. 165-175, doi: 10.1017 / S0007485310000295
- ↑ a b H. Novotná, J. Vanhara, A. Tóthová, N. Muráriková: Identification and taxonomy of the West Palaearctic species of Tachina Meigen (Diptera: Tachinidae) based on male terminalia and molecular analyzes . In: Entomologica Fennica , Vol. 20, No. 3, 2009, pp. 139-169.
- ↑ Wilfried Funk: Hedgehog Fly . Insect box, 2007-2011; Retrieved January 5, 2011
- ↑ Hedgehog fly . Animal portrait; Retrieved January 5, 2011
- ↑ Hedgehog fly ( Echinomyia fera ). Retrieved January 5, 2011
- ↑ Daniel Bartsch, Hans-Peter Tschorsnig: caterpillar flies (Diptera: Tachinidae) from hosts of the western and central Palearctic . In: Mitteilungen des Entomologische Verein Stuttgart , Jg. 45, 2010, pp. 137–140.
- ↑ Sergey P. Gaponov: Evolution trends in Tachinid egg morphology . In: Arch. Universidad de Granada , 9, 1997, pp. 33-54.
- ↑ John O. Stireman III, James E. O'Hara, D. MontyWood: Tachinidae: Evolution, Behavior, and Ecology . In: Annual Revue of Entomology , 51, 2006, pp. 525-555, doi: 10.1146 / annurev.ento.51.110104.151133
- ↑ HP Tschorsnig, VA Richter: Chap. 3.54. Family Tachinidae . In: L Papp, B Darvas (editors): Contributions to a Manual of Palaearctic Diptera , Vol 3: Higher Brachycera . Science Herald, Budapest 1998, pp. 691-827.
- ↑ Agnieszka Draber-Mońko: State of knowledge of the tachinid fauna of Eastern Asia, with new data from North Korea . Part II. Tachininae . In: FragmentaFaunistica , 54 (2), 2011, pp. 157-177.
- ^ Adolf Brauns: Pocket book of forest insects . Systematics and ecology. 2nd Edition. 1st volume. G. Fischer, Stuttgart 1970, ISBN 978-3-437-30228-2 , pp. 442 .
- ↑ gbif.org