Undeniably Interesting Facts About Hoverflies

Batesian mimicry is a survival tactic used by a harmless species to escape predators by looking like a dangerous one. The hoverfly uses this trick to look like a wasp, bee, or even a hornet. Both people and predators are often fooled. Yet being a true fly, it doesn't bite or sting.

Hoverflies, also known as flower flies, belong to the Syrphidae family, so they are often called syrphid flies too. They get their common names from their habit of hovering over flowers to feed on nectar. Because they eat nectar, they also act as pollinators. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, there are close to about 6,000 species of these flies. They are commonly found throughout the world on all continents except Antarctica.

How to Identify a Hoverfly

The easiest way to spot a hoverfly is by watching its flight. Bees and wasps don't hover much, hoverflies do it for long stretches, staying almost perfectly still in mid-air. But you can also tell them apart by looking more closely at the body.

The bristles on the dorsal thorax are short and soft, and the antennae are shorter than those of wasps. These flies are true flies belonging to the order Diptera, so they have only one pair of wings, not two pairs, as bees and wasps have.

The wings of flower flies also show a distinctive feature: a longitudinal vena spuria, which is a false vein that ends abruptly along the wing. The wing also has two cross veins, an upper outer and a lower outer cross vein. No other common fly family shares this exact pattern.

What Do They Look Like?

While hoverflies look generally similar to bees and wasps, they come in a wide range of sizes. Some are small and elongated; others are large and hairy. They all share one thing: bright yellow markings in the form of spots, stripes, and bands. They have short, stubby antennae and large, round compound eyes.

Males have larger eyes that sit close together, forming a triangular structure. The eyes of females are slightly smaller and placed further apart. This difference makes it easy to tell the sexes apart, and the larger male eyes help them spot females more accurately during mating.

Where Do They Live?

Hoverflies are incredibly adaptable. Their habitats range from woodlands to urban gardens. They thrive in almost any environment as long as the vegetation is plentiful enough to support all their growing stages. They can establish populations in all climates except the desert and tundra regions.

What Do They Eat?

Hoverfly larvae feed on aphids and other soft-bodied insects such as thrips and leafhoppers. Immature and adult flies feed mostly on nectar and pollen from flowers, and on honeydew produced by aphids. Some species also consume dead and decaying matter.

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How Do They Reproduce?

The hoverfly's lifespan is approximately one month. Their life cycle has four stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult (imago). How long the cycle takes depends on the season. In summer it spans about three weeks, while in winter it slows right down to about nine weeks.

An abundance of pollen is needed before flower flies will mate. Mature adults mate in early summer. Males mature faster than females, this timing gap helps ensure successful reproduction. Mating may happen while flying or while resting on foliage.

A female can lay up to 100 eggs during her life. She lays them on plant shoots and leaves where her larvae will have easy access to prey. The eggs are elongated ovals and whitish in color. The number of eggs she lays at any one time depends on how many aphids are present at that site.

The Larval Stage

When the eggs hatch, the legless, maggot-like larvae emerge and start feeding on plant leaves and aphid populations. They also eat other small, soft insects. The larvae consume hundreds of aphids in this stage. After about a week of feeding, they fall to the soil and pupate for around two weeks.

From Pupa to Adult

Pupae are oblong and pear-shaped. Their color changes gradually from green to the adult hoverfly's coloring. Pupation transforms them into imagoes, young, newly emerged hoverflies. They feed on nectar, pollen, and honeydew from aphids and grow into adults. In a year, 3 to 7 generations of these syrphid flies may be produced.

Other Interesting Facts

Gardeners love hoverflies because their larvae prey on insect pests and the adults are superb pollinators. A few more things that make these insects remarkable:

• The larvae can control 70-100% of the aphid population in their vicinity.
• They can fly backwards, something very few insects can manage.
• They do not sting or bite at all, despite their convincing wasp disguise.
• The larvae are sometimes used as bait in ice fishing.
• They are attracted to plants in the carrot and mint families.
• They can fly at speeds of up to 40 km/hr in short bursts.
• They can switch their reproductive drive on and off based on plant odors. Aphid-infested plants release a scent that promotes reproduction; uninfected plants cause the flies to hold back.

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