Flower fly (Syrphidae)

Description:

The following info found at http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/diptera/syr... - The economic importance of flower Flies is great. These Flies are pollinators of major significance. In some agroecosystems, such as orchards, they out perform native bees in pollinating the fruits. Syrphine maggots are important predators of pests, such as aphids, scales, thrips, and catepillars, and are rivaled only by lady-bird beetles and lacewings as predators useful for biological control. Some flower Flies, however, are detrimental. Maggots of a few species (Eumerus, Merodon) attack bulbs and tubers of ornamentals and vegetables. And a few species have been recorded as causing accidental myiasis in man.

Habitat:

Immature stages (eggs, maggots & puparia) are found in a diverse array of habitats. Larvae of the subfamily Microdontinae are inquilines in ants' nests. Those of Syrphinae are predaceous on soft-bodied arthropods, although some may occassionally be scavangers. Those of Eristalinae can predaceous (pipizines), saprophagous in litter and dead wood (most milesiines), coprophagous (some rhingiines and milesiines), mycetophagous (some rhingiines), phytophagous (as borers in tubers, stems, and wood, miners in leaves; most rhingiines, merodontines and some brachyopines), aquatic filter feeders (the rat-tailed maggots, mainly eristalines, some brachyopines and milesiines) or inquilines in social insect nests of termites, wasps, and bees (some volucellines and merodontines).

Notes:

This particular species' distribution area: Nearctic species known from Wisconsin to Quebec, south to Colorado, Texas and Florida (Thompson 2010). - Found on Carolina Cherry Laurel.