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Project Noah Nature School
Ogcodes sp.
These flies have small heads, shiny rounded thorax and a bladder like black abdomen with thin white posterior margins on the abdominal segments.
What was strange was there were three of them resting, one below the other, on a dried twig of a live tree.
I do believe they were of different sizes.
Pics 3 and 4 show roughness on the twig and if you look closely you will see these are miniscule black eggs laid by the third fly.
Spotted on a eucalyptus tree in a reserve.
The flies did not move even when disturbed, which I thought was unusual. While trying to research this behaviour I found some photos of these flies laying eggs and the spotter noted that there were more than one fly in the one place and not all of them were laying eggs. This made me look closer at my photos and this is when I noticed the eggs on the branch below the third and the largest of the flies.
Sorry my photos are unclear .
The larvae of these flies are said to parasitise spiders !
https://sites.google.com/site/insectsoft...
family: Acroceridae
Spotted on Oct 29, 2014
Submitted on Oct 29, 2014
2 Comments
Gobsmacked!
Interesting observations and great info Leuba. Thanks