Diptera.info

Posted by JariF on 13-07-2008 20:34

Hi, a LOT of these flies are flying every day over horse dung. The smell is terrible but fly so beutiful. It's not the smallest one of Ephydridae, size 4mm. Loviisa, Southern Finland today.

Jari

Edited by JariF on 13-07-2008 22:54

Posted by Tony Irwin on 13-07-2008 22:20

Stephane is correct. B)
Paracoenia fumosa, female.
Have you seen any landing on the dung? Are they feeding or ovipositing? Or just enjoying the smell? :D

Posted by JariF on 13-07-2008 22:49

Hi, thank You all ! The place where I have been watching these flies is full rotting grass etc in high heaps. They make soil in there and have heaps of horse dung too. When all this gets rotten the top will dry and all the liquids runs out from the lower part. This bad smelling liquid is the place. They are running on it and flying very low over it. If they are eating or not, I don't know. Ovipositing, maybe but there are a lot of males too. It's easy to have tens of them in the net with just one sweap. I ?must try tomorrow to take a picture of the whole thing.

Posted by JariF on 13-07-2008 22:53

A month ago I was wondering what these are because some of them had like golden face and some silverish. I'm not sure if these are same species, but from the same place. Sorry abouth the bad picture with black background.

Jari

Posted by JariF on 14-07-2008 17:55

Here is the place where they are living. (And a lot of other interesting species too).

Jari

Posted by Tony Irwin on 14-07-2008 20:11

What a great looking site! :D
Don't worry about the different facial colour in Paracoenia - this is just something that happens as the flies get older. In a number of ephydrid species, the facial dusting changes from grey or silver to a gold colour. There appear to be structural changes in the microtrichia which produce the different colours, but I don't know what causes the changes to occur.