Long-tailed Dance Fly Lat. “Rhamphomyia longicauda“

Rhamphomyia longicauda, the long-tailed dance fly, is a species of dance flies (insects in the family Empididae).

Territoriality

During the mating season (May–July), females congregate in leks 10 minutes before sunset and remain together for up to 40 minutes just after dawn or before dusk. Females return to the same lek every night, even if already inseminated, unless there is significant inclement weather, like continued rain or winds above 14 km/h. Unique to this species, the lek site is not a grounded surface; they hover above the aggregation site in a horizontal plane .3 m-.6 m above the ground/vegetation under an opening in an otherwise enclosed canopy.

Food resources

Females cannot hunt for food: they only receive protein from nuptial gifts brought to them by males. Female dependence on males for nutrition is the principal cause for sex role reversal in this species of fly. Males hunt an hour before sunset within a range of 30m from the lek site. They rapidly scour the area in a figure-8 flight pattern looking for food.

Males will eat any prey they can find, but they normally capture swarming insects. More specifically, most tend to prey on flies (Diptera), which make up 70% of their combined prey. They also feed on mayflies (Ephemeroptera) and caddisflies (Trichoptera), and infrequently feed on male ants, moths,[2] and mosquitoes. The size of their captures varies significantly, ranging from 2–4.5mm in one 5-year study.

External links

Ancestry Graph

Further Information

„Long-tailed Dance Fly“ on wikipedia.org

„Long-tailed Dance Fly“ on iNaturalist.org

Copyright

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Rhamphomyia longicauda the free encyclopedia Wikipedia which is released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). On Wikipedia a list of authors is available.