Three times this year already, and once a year or so ago, I have taken Pherbellia ventralis from different Roe Deer corpses at the same time as taking multiple specimens of the Heleomyzid Neoleria ruficauda. These have all been within conifer plantation on lowland heath. The basic appearance of the two is superficially very similar and only under the microscope have I discovered the Sciomyzid interlopers. Presumably the similarity is coincidence, but what is the Pherbellia doing on the corpse?
Pherbellia ventralis
Neoleria ruficauda
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Thanks for any comments. This is also a practice posting to check I can manage posts in the new system. :)
Ian
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AS ABOVE
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I also swept P. ventralis several times last week from rough grassland in lowland Lancs, though no carrion around. Calliphora vomitoria was also out on fence posts - I see this much less frequently than vicina.
Like Ian, I'm making this comment as a test to see how it works. I am not sure why the system has asked to add another subject heading, though?
We know that for some…
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We know that for some Sciomyzidae, the eggs and larvae of adults fed on a high protein diet develop faster (and thus have a competitive advantage) over eggs and larvae from adults on a low protein diet. (Beaver, 1989 cited in Knutson and Vala, 2011 – Biology of snail-killing Sciomyzidae flies.) It would therefore seem likely that adult females will seek out protein-rich sources of food, such as carrion, and the males will too if it improves their chances of meeting a female.
Although this took a bit of time to do an initial post, I found it quite straightforward and now that I have done it once, I think it will be easy to use in future. I quite like it. It makes it very easy to resize the photos compared to some other sites I use.
Ian