Tabanus sudeticus

Horsefly ( Tabanus sudeticus )

The horsefly ( Tabanus sudeticus ) is the largest Central European representatives of the brakes ( Tabanidae ).

Features

The animals are 19 to 24.5 millimeters long and have a gray-brown body color. The thorax is olive brown to gray colored and carries three indistinct, light longitudinal lines. The segments of the abdomen are dark brown and have rear is a narrow light brown rim which is slightly wider at your sides. On top of the second to fifth segment, this edge is exactly in the middle of each one forward-facing triangle. Their compound eyes are uniformly dark brown, which it mainly differs from the similar, slightly smaller cattle brake ( Tabanus bovinus ), which has green eyes.

Occurrence

The animals are distributed throughout the Palaearctic. They come especially to horses and cattle pastures of June prior to August.

Way of life

As with almost all brakes only the females suck blood, this mainly of horses and cattle. The animals fly with a deep and clearly audible hum. The white, elongated eggs are deposited in shallow disordered heap of plants. The resulting hatching whitish- green-brown larvae have Kriechwülste. They live in the soil and feed on both decaying plant material and small organisms that are killed by poison. Injects is this on the mouthparts.

Horseflies as disease carriers

Horseflies are determined as mechanical carriers (vectors) of the individual belonging to the lentivirus EIA virus. Their proboscis is large enough to store these viruses for infection in sufficient quantity in each case as in an injection cannula inside and out. If a blood meal on an EIA virus - infected animal interrupted, it can be transferred to their mouthparts adherent blood-borne pathogens at short range within about 30 minutes to an adjacent, not yet infected animal.

Furthermore, the horsefly is named as occasional wearer of Borrelia that cause the disease Lyme disease.