Hornet Killer? - _TNY_0877
I was out trying to shoot bumblebees in my garden when I noticed this guy, quite far away on the thuja hedge. I immediately recognised it as one of the Conopidae species, thick-headed flies, a family which alway look quite cool.
I managed exactly one shot of this one before it flew off. Here is where the 50.6 megapixel resolution came in handy, as this one needed extremely hard cropping to work - but the end result is surprisingly good to me.
The exact species is Conops vesicularis and normally they parasitise on bumblebees, so perhaps it too were looking for those, just like me.
One cool thing about these guys is that the asian honet (Vespa velutina) - not to be confused with the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia - is now an invasive species in France and other parts of central Europe. It hasn't gotten up here so far, but it is still a species which doesn't belong in Europe.
So what has this to do with this fly? Well, it turns out that researchers have found V. velutina colonies whose queens were killed by being devoured from the inside by larvae of Conops vesicularis. Perhaps this fly can help limit the number of invasive hornets in Europe?
Here's a blog entry about this: wild-life-in-france.blogspot.com/2014/07/conops-vesicular...
Hornet Killer? - _TNY_0877
I was out trying to shoot bumblebees in my garden when I noticed this guy, quite far away on the thuja hedge. I immediately recognised it as one of the Conopidae species, thick-headed flies, a family which alway look quite cool.
I managed exactly one shot of this one before it flew off. Here is where the 50.6 megapixel resolution came in handy, as this one needed extremely hard cropping to work - but the end result is surprisingly good to me.
The exact species is Conops vesicularis and normally they parasitise on bumblebees, so perhaps it too were looking for those, just like me.
One cool thing about these guys is that the asian honet (Vespa velutina) - not to be confused with the Asian giant hornet, Vespa mandarinia - is now an invasive species in France and other parts of central Europe. It hasn't gotten up here so far, but it is still a species which doesn't belong in Europe.
So what has this to do with this fly? Well, it turns out that researchers have found V. velutina colonies whose queens were killed by being devoured from the inside by larvae of Conops vesicularis. Perhaps this fly can help limit the number of invasive hornets in Europe?
Here's a blog entry about this: wild-life-in-france.blogspot.com/2014/07/conops-vesicular...