Flesh fly

Male flesh fly

• Real flesh flies ( Sarcophaga )
• Trabant flies ( Senotaina )
• Miltogramma
• Blesoxipha
• Agria

The flesh flies ( Sarcophagidae ) are a family of two-winged flies (Diptera ) and are among the flies ( Brachycera ). Worldwide there are about 2,500 species of flesh flies known, of which about ten in Germany.

The flies are gray or black and often have a checkered design on the abdomen. The chest area (thorax ) has a dark longitudinal stripes. You can reach heights of up to 15 millimeters. Their mouthparts are designed to lick up liquids. The flies feed on juices, about honeydew, nectar, tree sap and juices of damaged fruit.

Larval development

The larvae are made ​​like and accordingly have no head capsule. You breathe in the first stages of the skin, from the third stage, open the foremost and rearmost spiracles of the tracheal system. They live in different, mostly animal substrates, the most primitive species feed on carrion ( Nekrophagie ). A number of other species are parasitoids that live on or in invertebrate hosts. For host range also includes earthworms, snails, scorpions, cockroaches, beetles and cicadas. Very rarely is the inclusion of plant food.

Representatives of the flesh flies (selection)

Real flesh flies - genus Sarcophaga

The larvae of Sarcophaga species usually live in carrion or feces ( coprophagia ). Very often is in Germany the gray flesh fly ( Sarcophaga carnaria ) that reach body lengths of 13 to 15 millimeters. The Grey flesh fly is also called Aasfliege. The females lay their very mature eggs from which hatch soon after a larva into the inputs of earthworm holes or in droppings of earthworms. The young larvae hatched then search probably passed over the smell, active earthworms on and penetrate into this, often in the range of the belt ( clitellum ). The development lasts only a few days, the earthworm perishes after. In these flies have several generations, overwintering occurs as a larva or pupa.

Trabant fly - genus Senotaina

The Trabant flies lurking in the nests of wasps grave, enter the stunned prey for their larvae. Follow this and then lay an egg on the prey, in the grub then develops. The Trabant flies belong as S. albifrons and S. conica.

In a similar way as the satellite flies the larvae of the genus Miltogramma, this however in the nests of solitary bees and wasps from the inventories to their " hosts " live, in this case, in addition to anesthetized insects also of honey and pollen. The larvae of Blesoxipha laticornis are internal parasites of grasshoppers and of Agria mamillata external parasites in different insects.

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