Thread subject: Diptera.info :: Diptera Larva

Posted by Xespok on 13-10-2005 10:30
#1

I suspect this is a Diptera larva. Can someone say more about it?
www.diptera.info/forim/4-0874-1.jpg

Posted by Paul Beuk on 13-10-2005 11:27
#2

Can you say more about it? Where did you find it. The substrate appears to be liquid but was it aquatic, living in wet rotting vegetable matter, ...

Posted by Xespok on 13-10-2005 16:46
#3

There was an overflow of a small creek with a plastic thing attached to it, so that it would directly flow into some channel alongside the road. The plastic thing was grown in by some bacterial biofilm. The water on the biofilm was very thin, maybe thinner than the larva. The water was flowing slowly. To be honest id did not look like a very eutrophic environment, but the larva might have been washed down from the creak, which might have contained some more plant material.

Possibly it is not important, but this fly was around in large numbers:

http://xespok.net...1000028181

I do not really know what kind of fly this is.

Posted by Paul Beuk on 13-10-2005 21:40
#4

I think the fly may be an ephydrid, but possibly Kahis can confirm that. I will look into the larva.

Posted by Paul Beuk on 14-10-2005 07:22
#5

The best I can do is a chironomid larva, though I cannot rule out Ceratopogonidae.
There are many grazers in the Chironmidae of which the larvae go across submerged surfaces to graze the algae.

Posted by Xespok on 14-10-2005 11:07
#6

Yes, it is fully conceivable. In fact the morpholohy is quite similar to some other Chironomid larvae, that I had seen before, though the color of this larva is not red (the others I saw were red, likely larvae of C. yoshimatsui), possibly because this species lives in a more oxygen-rich environment.