Longlegged Flies – Dolichopodidae

Long-legged Flies   Family: Dolichopodidae Common Name: Long-legged flies Appearance: Adult flies are small to medium (1-9 mm) sized insects with metallic blue, green, or copper-colored slender bodies and clear wings with characteristic venation. They have long legs and prominent genitalia at the end of the abdomen. Host Plants or Food: Thrips, Aphids, Leafhoppers, small Caterpillars, eggs of mites, and other small insects. Territory: Throughout North America Mode of Damage: Beneficial Garden Insect Habits and Life History: Long-legged flies live in a variety of habitats such as woodlands, meadows, orchards, and wetlands especially. Adult males, when they want to mate they usually attract a female by displaying their legs or wings to the female, or you can say by they do a special type of courtship dance. Female lays eggs which hatch to give larvae. Larvae have no visible head structure. They feed on small insects and live in moist places, mud, under bark, slow-moving water, or dead organic matter. Pupation occurs in cocoons made up of soil particles pasted together. Pupae have a pair of dorsal horns that help in respiration.