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