Nature Blog Network

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Larval Munchies


It's time for another Life Photo Meme posting. The theme for this week is garden life... of course, this being TO95%, I need an invert from the garden... so... have a hoverfly larva munching on aphids! I posted an adult hoverfly (maybe Toxomerus marginatus?) for an earlier invert Life Photo posting and thought this would be a good follow-up.



In the previous post, I mentioned adult feeding and the fact that many hoverfly species' larval forms are considered beneficial bugs by gardeners, as they eat aphids and other "pest" insects. Now I can show a hoverfly larva (Epistrophe eligans) hard at work. This time the photo is not my own, but is the work of Michel Vuijlsteke, who has a great Hoverfly collection on Flickr.

Kingdom
Animalia

Phylum
Arthropoda

SubPhylum
Hexapoda

Class
Insecta

Order
Diptera

Family
Syrphidae

Genus
Epistrophe

Species
Epistrophe elegans

1 comment:

  1. Whoa! Awesome photo, it looks rather B-movie monster-esk munching on those aphids.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.