Robber Fly

Description:

About 15mm large, elongated body brown & black colour, spiny legs and three simple eyes in a characteristic depression on the top of their head between their two large compound eyes, dense moustache of stiff bristles on the face, the antennae are short with three segments.

Habitat:

Spotted during a day walk at Gunung Gede National Park, Java / Indonesia. Asilidae occur in all zoogeographical regions except Antarctica. However, the highest levels of biodiversity are in warm climates; tropical or subtropical and arid or semi-arid regions tend to have the greatest variety of species, followed by areas where rainfall is highly seasonal.

Notes:

The Asilidae are the robber fly family, also called assassin flies. The name "robber flies" reflects their notoriously aggressive predatory habits; they feed mainly or exclusively on other insects and as a rule they wait in ambush and catch their prey in flight. Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Class: Insecta Order: Diptera Family: Asilidae Subfamily: Asilinae or Ommatiinae Genus: Ommatius