black-tailed laphria

Black-tailed laphria is a common, early season, small to medium-sized, bee-mimic robber fly. It occurs in the United States and southern Canada east of the Great Plains.

Adults appear as early as the first week of April and fly as late as late August in other parts of their range, but all records in Minnesota are from very late May to mid-July. They are usually the first robber fly to appear in the spring. They are found in sunny places in an around deciduous woodlands, at forest edges with thick vegetation, at roadsides, on stumps, and on woodpiles. They perch on foliage three to four feet above the ground, and they often land on the leaves of trees in dappled sunlight.

Adults are 7⁄16″to ¾″ (11 to 20 mm) in length. The body is robust and hairy.

The head is black. There are two large compound eyes and three small simple eyes (ocelli). The compound eyes extend above the level of the top of the head (vertex), making the head appear hollowed out between the eyes when viewed from the front. The ocelli are arranged in a triangle on a prominent rounded projection (tubercle) in the middle of the head between the compound eyes. The hairs on the vertex and the upper side of the back of the head (occiput) are black. There is a dense mustache of long stiff bristly hairs (mystax) on the face between the compound eyes at the lower margin, and a cluster of forward-directed bristles (a “beard”) on the lower part of the face. The mystax is mostly yellow above, black just at the bottom. The beard is yellow on the male, black on the female. The antennae have 3 segments. The third segment is elongated.

The thorax is stout, black, and glossy, and it is covered with long, erect, fine, yellow hairs. The hairs are moderately dense, but they do not completely obscure the shiny black thorax. The balancing organs (halteres) are yellow. The small plate between the wing bases (scutellum) is covered with light yellow hairs.

The abdomen is entirely black and shiny, and it is covered with scattered, long, fine, black hairs. The sides of the first segment (tergite) are covered with black hairs often mixed with yellow hairs and bristles.

The legs are black. On the female, the hairs on the legs are entirely black. On the male, there is usually a variable amount of yellow hairs mixed with the black hairs on the third segment (femur) of each leg and on the fourth segment (tibia) of the front and middle legs.

Total length: 7⁄16″to ¾″ (11 to 20 mm)

Deciduous woodlands, forest edges, roadsides, stumps, and woodpiles

End of May to mid-July in Minnesota

Black-tailed laphria is a fast and active flier. It seldom remains in any one place for long.

Sources

27, 29, 30, 82, 83.

Common

Infraorder
Orthorrhapha was historically one of two infraorders of Brachycera, a suborder of Diptera. However, Brachycera did not contain all of the descendants of the last common ancestor (paraphyletic). It was split into five extant (still existing) and one extinct infraorder. Orthorrhapha is now considered obsolete and has not been used in decades, but it persists in printed literature and on some online sources. A recent revision of the order Diptera (Pope, et al., 2011) revived the name Orthorrhapha, but this has not been widely accepted.

It was just hanging out on our trash cans. Have never seen one around here before.

Laphria flavicollis
Steve Collins

Laphria flavicollis - That One Was Tasty - Off To Find Another
Nature's Wild Things

BEE MIMIC ROBBER FLY Laphria flavicollis preening
Rob Curtis

Lavia Blanca
7/18/2024

Location: Lunenburg, MA

It was just hanging out on our trash cans. Have never seen one around here before.