Fly - Wikipedia. True flies are insects of the order. Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek di = two, and ptera = wings. Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings being reduced to club- like balancing organs known as halteres. Diptera is a large order containing an estimated 1,0.
Their wing arrangement gives them great manoeuvrability in flight, and claws and pads on their feet enable them to cling to smooth surfaces. Flies undergo complete metamorphosis; the eggs are laid on the larval food- source and the larvae, which lack true limbs, develop in a protected environment, often inside their source of their food. The pupa is a tough capsule from which the adult emerges when ready to do so; flies mostly have short lives as adults. Diptera is one of the major insect orders and are of considerable ecological and human importance. Flies are important pollinators, second only to the bees and their Hymenopteran relatives. Flies may have been among the evolutionarily earliest pollinators responsible for early plant pollination.
Fruit flies are used as model organisms in research, but less benignly, mosquitoes are vectors for malaria, dengue, West Nile fever, yellow fever, encephalitis, and other infectious diseases, and houseflies spread food- borne illnesses. Flies can be annoyances especially in some parts of the world where they can occur in large numbers, buzzing and settling on the skin or eyes to bite or seek fluids. Larger flies such as tsetse flies and screwworms cause significant economic harm to cattle. Blowfly larvae, known as gentles, and other dipteran larvae, known more generally as maggots, are used as fishing bait and as food for carnivorous animals. They are also used in medicine in debridementto clean wounds. Taxonomy and phylogeny. They belong to the Mecopterida, alongside the Mecoptera, Siphonaptera, Lepidoptera and Trichoptera.
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However, some true flies such as Hippoboscidae (louse flies) have become secondarily wingless. Based on the attraction of many modern fly groups to shiny droplets, it has been suggested that they may have fed on honeydew produced by sap- sucking bugs which were abundant at the time, and dipteran mouthparts are well- adapted to softening and lapping up the crusted residues. Many new species of lower Diptera developed in the Triassic, about 2. Many lower Brachycera appeared in the Jurassic, some 1. A third radiation took place among the Schizophora at the start of the Paleogene, 6. The monophyly of holometabolous insects has long been accepted, with the main orders being established as Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Hymenoptera and Diptera, and it is the relationships between these groups which has caused difficulties. Diptera is widely thought to be a member of Mecopterida, along with Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Trichoptera (caddisflies), Siphonaptera (fleas), Mecoptera (scorpionflies) and possibly Strepsiptera (twisted- wing flies).
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Diptera has been grouped with Siphonaptera and Mecoptera in the Antliophora, but this has not been confirmed by molecular studies. The Nematocera are recognized by their elongated bodies and many- segmented, often feathery antennae as represented by mosquitoes and crane flies. The Brachycera have rounder bodies and much shorter antennae.
The construction of a phylogenetic tree has been the subject of ongoing research. The following cladogram is based on the FLYTREE project. They include many familiar insects such as house flies, blow flies, mosquitoes, gnats, black flies, midges and fruit flies. More than 1. 50,0. Many nematoceran larvae are aquatic.
Animals parasitised include molluscs, woodlice, millipedes, insects, mammals. In wet and colder environments flies are significantly more important as pollinators. Compared to bees, they need less food as they do not need to provision their young. Many flowers that bear low nectar and those that have evolved trap pollination depend on flies. These include the cave dwelling Mycetophilidae (fungus gnats) whose larvae are the only diptera with bioluminescence. The Sciaridae are also fungus feeders.
Some plants are pollinated by fungus feeding flies that visit fungus infected male flowers. The first tagma of the fly, the head, bears the eyes, the antennae, and the mouthparts (the labrum, labium, mandible, and maxilla make up the mouthparts). The second tagma, the thorax, bears the wings and contains the flight muscles on the second segment, which is greatly enlarged; the first and third segments have been reduced to collar- like structures, and the third segment bears the halteres, which help to balance the insect during flight. The third tagma is the abdomen consisting of 1. The compound eyes may be close together or widely separated, and in some instances are divided into a dorsal region and a ventral region, perhaps to assist in swarming behaviour.
The antennae are well- developed but variable, being thread- like, feathery or comb- like in the different families. The mouthparts are adapted for piercing and sucking, as in the black flies, mosquitoes and robber flies, and for lapping and sucking as in many other groups.
The gut includes large diverticulae, allowing the insect to store small quantities of liquid after a meal. The third segments of the antennae and the maxillary palps bear the main olfactory receptors, while the gustatory receptors are in the labium, pharynx, feet, wing margins and female genitalia. The taste receptors in females at the tip of the abdomen receive information on the suitability of a site for ovipositing. A further adaptation for flight is the reduction in number of the neural ganglia, and concentration of nerve tissue in the thorax, a feature that is most extreme in the highly derived Muscomorpha infraorder. The only other order of insects bearing a single pair of true, functional wings, in addition to any form of halteres, are the Strepsiptera. In contrast to the flies, the Strepsiptera bear their halteres on the mesothorax and their flight wings on the metathorax. It consists of eleven segments in primitive groups and ten segments in more derived groups, the tenth and eleventh segments having fused.
Each segment is made up of a dorsal and a ventral sclerite, connected by an elastic membrane. In some females, the sclerites are rolled into a flexible, telescopic ovipositor. These act as gyroscopic organs and are rapidly oscillated in time with the wings; they act as a balance and guidance system by providing rapid feedback to the wing- steering muscles, and flies deprived of their halteres are unable to fly. The wings and halteres move in synchrony but the amplitude of each wing beat is independent, allowing the fly to turn sideways. The directional changes are called saccades and typically involve an angle of 9.
They are initiated by visual stimuli as the fly observes an object, nerves then activate steering muscles in the thorax that cause a small change in wing stroke which generate sufficient torque to turn. Detecting this within four or five wingbeats, the halteres trigger a counter- turn and the fly heads off in a new direction. Dolichopodid flies in the genus Condylostylus respond in less than 5 milliseconds to camera flashes by taking flight. Langmuir suggested an estimated speed of 2. Many flies mate in flight while swarming. In many flies, the larval stage is long and adults may have a short life.
Most dipteran larvae develop in protected environments; many are aquatic and others are found in moist places such as carrion, fruit, vegetable matter, fungi and, in the case of parasitic species, inside their hosts. They tend to have thin cuticles and become desiccated if exposed to the air. Apart from the Brachycera, most dipteran larvae have sclerotinised head capsules, which may be reduced to remnant mouth hooks; the Brachycera, however, have soft, gelatinized head capsules from which the sclerites are reduced or missing. Many of these larvae retract their heads into their thorax.
Especially in the Brachycera, little demarcation is seen between the thorax and abdomen, though the demarcation may be visible in many Nematocera, such as mosquitoes; in the Brachycera, the head of the larva is not clearly distinguishable from the rest of the body, and few, if any, sclerites are present. Informally, such brachyceran larvae are called maggots. The eyes and antennae of brachyceran larvae are reduced or absent, and the abdomen also lacks appendages such as cerci.
This lack of features is an adaptation to food such as carrion, decaying detritus, or host tissues surrounding endoparasites. These are found especially in groups that have larvae dependent on food sources that are short- lived or are accessible for brief periods. In Hylemya strigosa (Anthomyiidae) the larva moults to the second instar before hatching, and in Termitoxenia (Phoridae) females have incubation pouches, and a full developed third instar larva is deposited by the adult and it almost immediately pupates with no freely feeding larval stage. The tsetse fly (as well as other Glossinidae, Hippoboscidae, Nycteribidae and Streblidae) exhibits adenotrophic viviparity; a single fertilised egg is retained in the oviduct and the developing larva feeds on glandular secretions. When fully grown, the female finds a spot with soft soil and the larva works its way out of the oviduct, buries itself and pupates. Some flies like Lundstroemia parthenogenetica (Chironomidae) reproduce by thelytokous parthenogenesis while some gall midges have larvae that can produce eggs (paedogenesis). In some groups, particularly the Nematocera, the pupa is intermediate between the larval and adult form; these pupae are described as .
The outer surface of the pupa may be leathery and bear spines, respiratory features or locomotory paddles. In other groups, described as . In these, the outer surface is a puparium, formed from the last larval skin, and the actual pupa is concealed within.