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Hello everyone and my compliments on the very interesting forum! (Also thanks to Paul Beuk for having read my email, viewed my post in another forum and authorized me on here and encouraged me to forward the same question to you).

I resume the same things i've already written somewhere else but the question is still open:

On January 21th i've found a little animal on the (clean) toilet bowl water, nearly drawning. I've rescued it with a piece of paper and put it on a paper sheet. Since it seemed at that moment unable to move normally, I used some toilet paper to take away the remaining water and it seemed to work.

I recognized it's of the diptera kind, then made a research with its characteristics to try to figure out its exact subspecies: it has some black silks on abdomen and bottom and a dark/blue bottom. I'm keeping it and trying to feed it with fruits (dates, pieces of apples, prunes and some sugar solution when necessary) but most of the times, it authonomously eats from fruits.

What i've figured out so far is that it may be of the Calliphora species (thank you Paul for confirming my idea), but i'm not yet sure if it's a Calliphora vicina (i think the most probable?) a Calliphora vomitoria or even something else. I'll attach some pictures at the end of the post and ask you to be so kind and help me with the identification.

Moreover, this fly has some issue with flying, it cannot fly at all and i'm trying to figure out what the problem can be. At first i thought that some sugar crystal with which i fed it the first time sticked to her wing and made it heavy, but looking more closely it doesn't seem to be such an external problem. The fly just jumps (sometimes backwards too) but doesn't take flight at all. The first days it showed more power in climbing, but now it's getting more tame, maybe because it has no need for looking for food outside the paper fence.

So in conclusion, what i kindly ask from you all is 1) if you can help me identify it and 2) if you please could give me some advice to try to figure out what the problem with its wings is and if there's something I can try to help it fly again.

Thank you for your attention and again, I'm getting so interested with your forum that i'm considering the idea of a donation!

Here are the pictures (I know they're many, but it took me very much to get single views of each wing), thank you in advance.

L.M.

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Dear L.M.

Despite your great efforts in the pictures, it is hardly possible to tell. Your light is on the background, less on the fly. So you need to improve your light more to the fly, so that we can see the colouration (esp. of the basicosta, wchich is a little thing at the wing base)

Theo

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Thank you for your advices! I've tried to take a closer picture. Here is it:




Please tell me if the pictures are still unclear, i'm learning so much from this forum, so i want to be able to take pictures from where the animal can be distinguished!

A last question, since you seem to be aknowledged on the matter:

Is it possible to make it fly again? Do you see any fault on the wings? Any way to repair it?

Thank you really for your efforts!

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The last pictures show the pale (orange) anterior spiracle, indicating this is Calliphora vicina. Once the wing is damaged like this, there is nothing that can be done to help it, I would say.

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Thank you for identifying my insect. As you'll have already understood, I have no experience at all with diptera, that's why i wondered if solutions existed. For example, i've seen a very beautiful video online of one man restoring monarch butterflies' ability to fly by just fixing with glue to the broken wing another piece of similar wing found elsewhere, and it worked to make the monarch fly again. As I'm reading further about flies and I'm getting more and more interested, I would be curious to know what is the difference in this case: is it because diptera pump the emolymph inside the wings (and maybe lepidoptera not?)...

I know this question may be off topic and far beyond the literature of recognizing and classifying insects, but it is such an interesting field...

Thank you for your answers, for your patience and for your time!

L.

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No neither pump any lymph in the veins. The wing formation of butterflies and flies follow genetic, and embryological patterns of development. As to their similarity,little is known.The field is just beginning with the advent of the genome project.

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Yes, much better, !

Theo