---

Good Evening,

How are you?

This larva was collected from a large pool of rancid water in Richards Bay, South Africa. Can anyone please help me with an identification? Also, can anyone suggest how to raise the larva? I apologize for the bad picture quality.

Thank you in advance for any help that you may be able to offer me.

Sincerely,
Joh Viljoen

---

looks like an Ephydridae to me....Scatella like, but probably many similar genera there.
Don't know how to breed them, sorry.

---

Thank you very much. I will look it up, and see what I can find... Are there any specific characterisitics that I should look for to help me narrow it down?

---

In NW-Europe Ephydridae are most often identified, besides the habitus, on the shape of the prothoracic spiracle, the length of the paired posterior spiracle and its last abdominal segment (which in this case is short) and in some cases the presence or absence of ventral spinule patches. In your larva it seems to have some kind of dorsal rows of hairs on the posterior edge of each abdominal segment, and I guess this must be typical for some kind of genus, but this type I haven't seen in Europe.

---

That is very helpful, thank you. I will try and note all the characteristics that you have mentioned. I was uncertain about their feeding habits, so I placed some small invertebrates(Cyclops and Daphnia) in their rearing container, as I thought they may be predatory(as in the case of Ochthera) but they simply ignored them. Then(I left them overnight first), I read that Scatella larvae feed on algae and yeast, so I added some yeast to their water. They immediately started 'grazing' along the sides of the container. So, I assunme that they are algophagous.

Thank you again,
Johanan E. Viljoen