Howdy, BugFans,

The BugLady has gotten a few reports of these magnificent flies recently, so here’s an episode from 2018, with some new words and thoughts and links added. 

People often ask the BugLady what her favorite bug is, and although there’s a crowded field for second place, the Tiger Swallowtail butterfly is the hands-down winner.��Most Impressive Bug?��The Black horse fly (Tabanus atratus) (family Tabanidae) certainly ranks high on that list.��It is one imposing horsefly, and although she knows that it’s (probably) not going to pursue her (they��generally stalk non-human mammals), just seeing one gives her a bit of a start.��We visited the Black horse fly in the distant past, very briefly, one of an array of flies, and it’s time to fill in some gaps in its biography.��This fly is��not��the tiny, humpbacked Black fly that lives near rivers and torments all comers.����

Yes, there are larger flies in the neighborhood — some of the robber flies, for example, are longer — but they lack the heft of this fly. Even the official measurement of 20 to 28 mm (an inch-ish) doesn’t adequately communicate it. As one����correspondent put it: “This is the largest fly I have ever seen, I actually saw two of these at two different locations on the same day. I am guessing it is a horsefly of some sort. A handful of these things ought to be able to carry a horse as a ‘to-go’ meal!” And as another����correspondent said, “I’m assuming this is a female Tabanus atratus? First time I’ve seen one. Not sure I want to see another.”��And as��Jess Adams wrote in his blog “Long Leggedy Beasties,��“I’m not sure if they are called horse flies because they feed on horses or because they are the size��of horses….”

Indeed, it’s hard to believe that ��are not the biggest horseflies on the continent, but they come in a close second to, which may hold the World Title.��������

“Atratus” means “clothed in black,” and one of the common names for this fly is the Mourning fly.��Adults are variously dark gray/black/brownish-purple, with equally dark wings, dark eyes,��and ��(in case you still were unsure of your ID).��Males have, and (dichoptic).��������

It’s been suggested that they’re ��(the BugLady expected to find a bunch of common names for this fly, most of them profane, but she didn’t come across any). They can be a challenge to photograph because their velvety, black color sucks up the light. Check the phenomenal, .����

Their ��and may be twice as long as their elders when mature.�� hey have pointy mouthparts that, like their elders’, can pack quite a punch.����

Though it’s been recorded throughout the Lower 48, the Black horse fly is mostly found east of the Rockies. Its larvae live in wet/damp places at the edges of wetlands, and the adults are generally found within a mile or so of the ponds they grew up in.����

Females lay their eggs in mounds on wet ground or on sedges and other vegetation above water, and they may (male Black horse flies don’t live for long).��The newly-hatched larvae drop down and dig into the detritus or mud, and they spend two years as larvae.����

According to Werner Marchand in the��Monographs of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research��(1920), “Walsh found his aquatic larvae, on many occasions, ‘amongst floating ‘rejectamenta.’��On one occasion, he found six or seven specimens in the interior of a floating log so soft and rotten that it could be cut like cheese.” He goes on to say that “when handled, the larva is, according to Walsh, ‘very vigorous and restless,’ and burrows with great strength between the fingers, and even on a smooth table, walks as fast as any ordinary caterpillar, backwards or forward; when placed in a vessel of water it swims vigorously, twice the length of its body at every stroke...”����

“Rejectamenta” — the BugLady’s new favorite word!

Marchand writes that the larvae can produce sound “…the crackling noise was freely produced by full-grown Tabanus atrata larvae, and… was chiefly heard when the larvae were disturbed and defending themselves with their sharp mandibles.��The coincidence of the two phenomena was so close that I am bound to assume that the sound was produced by means of the mandibles.”

The larvae climb up onto drier ground to pupate in the soil.��Marchand says that “the pupa state lasts but a few days, and before the emergence of the fly the pupa is pushed to the surface of the ground by means of the bristles and thorns of the abdomen, with bending movements of the body.” For more about what happens in a pupal case, see��.��

Much of what is written about Black horse flies concerns their food and feeding habits.�� The larvae are active predators.��Marchand again: “On September 2, 1863, he found a nearly full-grown larva among floating rejectamenta, and between that date and September 23, this larva devoured ‘the mollusks of eleven univalves’ (genus Planorbus) from one-half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter; and on three separate occasions observed it work its way into the mouth of the shell.”��They eat other aquatic invertebrates, too, and small vertebrates, and even their Tabanid brethren.��Jones and Anthony, in��The Tabanidae (Diptera) of Floridawrite “medium to large-size larvae of Tabanus atrata are extremely aggressive.��When two or more are placed in the same container, only a short time usually elapses before all are dead except one.��The survivor will feed on the victim if hungry, but generally it appears that a larva kills to avoid being killed.”����

Like mosquitoes, female tabanids need a blood meal in order to maximize egg production.��Both males and females feed on nectar from flowers (he lacks her piercing mouthparts), but when she is in reproductive mode, a female will stalk livestock and other large, dark mammals by their movement and by their CO²trail.��She punctures her victim’s skin with a pretty sophisticated set of blades (modified mandibles and maxillae) and is classed as a��sanguivore��– more specifically, she is a��telmophage,��because she laps up the resulting pool of blood instead of sucking it (unlike mosquitoes, who are “vessel feeders” or��solenophages��that employ a “syringe and pump”).��Got it? ��

Although humans are generally not targets, a bite is, apparently, unforgettable.��When present in numbers, these flies can be a problem for livestock due to blood loss, distress, and potential disease transmission.����

Several resources pointed out something that the BugLady had never really thought about before — that being a sanguivore, getting a meal by puncturing an animal that is larger and that takes exception to being punctured, is a dangerous way to make a living.��The blood is, as one researcher points out, “not freely given,” and a potential victim may simply swat its tormentor away or may eat it.��The BugLady once went on a canoe trip on Wisconsin’s Oconto River during which she was accompanied by clouds of deer flies and learned to swat them without breaking stroke, and after nine hours on the water, there was a layer of dead deer flies over the bottom of the canoe. (Our blood was not freely given, either.) (The 50 yards of whitewater just before the pull-out spot were pretty memorable, too.)����

Another down-side of blood-feeding is that depending on the body temperature of the “pierce-ee,” the cold-blooded piercer is courting temperature shock by ingesting a substance that is much warmer than it is.  

The “take-home” is that sanguivores need to do their work in a hurry (solenophages tend to get in and out more quickly and quietly than telmophages), and that the nutrition received needs to be worth the energy – and risk — required to extract it.����

The BugLady

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It’s time again to celebrate the bugs that fly under the radar – bugs that are neither famous nor infamous and that live alongside of us, about whom not much has been written. All three of these species, coincidentally, have their flight periods in the first half of the summer.

CURRANT TIP BORER

This beetle is a poster child for insects that are barely visible online, although unlike many, it has picked up a common name along the way.

The Currant tip borer (Psenocerus supernotatus) is a not-very-long-horned member of the long-horned beetle family Cerambycidae. The long-horned (long-antennaed) beetles are divided, uneasily and depending on whose book you read, into 10 subfamilies, and the Currant tip borer’s subfamily, Lamiinae, the Flat-faced Longhorns, includes about 20,000 of the 30,000 species of Cerambycid worldwide.  There are 5,000 species in the New World, but only 250 of them occur in North America.

This little beetle (about 1/3”) can be found in early summer, east of a line from Manitoba to Texas. Its larvae feed within the dead branches of a variety of woody plants, and it’s been found on oak, Virginia creeper, poison ivy, sumac, catalpa, and mulberry as well as currant and gooseberry. Considering its name, the BugLady was expecting to find a bunch of Extension Bulletins telling us how to protect our gooseberries and currants, but she found none.

Mr. R. P. Dow, writing in the Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society in 1916, recounts how he found some Currant tip borer larvae in sumac pith. First to hatch were two males that, after exploring their surroundings, began to fight by a specific spot on the twig. Two days later, a female emerged from that spot. He wrote, “It is evident that some sense organ revealed the female to the males not less than 36 hours before her emergence from the unmarked wood.”

. Hmmm – the BugLady doesn’t see it

SULPHUR-WINGED GRASSHOPPER

The BugLady automatically surveys butterflies and dragonflies as she walks – it’s like breathing. From mid-summer on, she sees Clouded Sulphurs over the grasslands (bugguide.net informs the BugLady’s spellcheck that “both spellings of “sulphur” or “sulfur” are seen frequently. The first prevalent in older works, with the second becoming more common in recent decades”). With black-bordered, lemon-yellow wings, the butterflies are almost unmistakable. (This is a remarkable shot, and not just because it shows . Sulphurs perch with their wings closed, so the black border is seldom photographed).

Almost unmistakable – the Sulphur-winged grasshopper (Arphia sulphurea) always makes her do a double-take https://bugguide.net/node/view/640715/bgimage.  Members of the genus Arphia are found across North America; they’re in the Short-horned grasshopper family Acrididae and in the Band-winged grasshopper subfamily Oedipodinae, some of which are , and .

Most of the grasshoppers that the BugLady researches have extensive rap sheets due to their fondness for plants that grow in ag-lands and pastures, but she could find no wanted posters for the Sulphur-winged grasshopper, alias the Yellow-winged/Spring yellow-winged grasshopper.

Sulphur-winged grasshoppers are found in grasslands, edges, and sometimes in open woodlands east of that Manitoba-to-Texas line, and north just into Canada. They feed primarily on grasses, with a few wildflowers thrown in for good measure, and unlike many grasshoppers, they don’t eat any animal material. Bugguide.net tells us that both males and females “crepitate” (make snapping/crackling/popping sounds with their wings) during courtship displays. Adults can be seen starting in early spring and are gone by mid-summer.

They overwinter as late-stage nymphs, and they have the best nymphs ever! and

WHITE-SPOTTED/THREE-SPOTTED HORSEFLY

In early summer, the BugLady spied this impressive male horsefly eyeing her from a lily pad (male, because its huge eyes meet in the middle – all the better to see you with…..). Horse flies and deer flies are in the family Tabanidae. For “Horse fly 101,” visit here.  Many species are also called (visit the Atlantic coast in summer to get the full Greenhead experience), and many have spectacular, Technicolor eyes that make them the darlings of macro photographers.

• (Sorry – they’re just so cool.)

They’re the flies we love to hate. In The Tabanidae of Minnesota (1930), author Cornelius B. Philip anthropomorphizes, “After feeding to satisfaction, the fly may withdraw and make new stabs, apparently for the pure love of it…….”

The Three-spotted horse fly (Tabanus trimaculatus) is one of about 100 genus members in North America, and it will not surprise southern BugFans to read that the genus is most diverse in the their neck of the US. According to bugguide.net, tabanus was “a name used by the Romans for a kind of biting fly.”

Horse flies lay , in damp areas. When the eggs hatch, the drop to the ground or into a “semiaquatic habitat” and burrow into the soft soil, where they find small invertebrates to eat. They’re eaten, in turn, by nematodes and mud-probing birds, and they’re parasitized by sand wasps, tachinid flies, and chalcid wasps. Here’s an interesting shot of a , and a shot of an .

TSHFs are fairly early-season horse flies that seem to prefer woodsy settings – researchers in the Minnesota study found that “the larvae outnumber by far any other species taken but the adults seem to have retiring habits in Minnesota.”

From what the BugLady could find, the TSHF is not a notorious scourge of man or beast. Yes, female horse flies need the protein from a blood meal in order to produce eggs, but both females and males also feed on nectar. In a study to discover which species of horse flies were most annoying to deer in Oklahoma, four species made up 95% of the horse fly attacks, and although the TSHF was abundant, it was not seen feeding on deer.

The BugLady

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