Insect gadfly - how bizarre nature is!

At its core, the insect gadfly is a fly, but not quite ordinary. It differs from other two-winged insects in its reproduction feature. The fact is that she uses mammals to carry her offspring: most often cattle and horses, but she can also arrange masonry under human skin.

We'll talk more about the reproduction mechanism of this parasite below, but now look at how the gadfly looks in the photo.

Gadfly and horsefly

Before we begin to describe the gadfly in detail, we will talk about its difference from another two-winged insect - horsefly, with which our today's hero is often confused.
In fact, horsefly and gadfly differences are the most dramatic, although they look very similar in appearance, and they live in approximately the same places in nature. Look at the next shot, and the external differences of the two types will be noticeable.

The most important thing is how a gadfly differs from horsefly - a bite. For horseflies, it is a way of feeding, as it is a blood-sucking insect with all the ensuing consequences. The gadfly bites exclusively for reproduction.

On a note! It is not difficult to guess, and in this case only females bite to lay their egg laying in the place of the bite.

Insect biology

In principle, gadflies are not just one species, but the collective name of all dipterans, which, one way or another, use warm-blooded animals for carrying their eggs. Scientists of these flies united in three families, which are different in where the flies lay their eggs:

1. Gastric. The flies of this subfamily seek to masonry in the vicinity of the animal’s mouth, so that after swallowing the eggs, the larvae appear in the host’s stomach. One of the representatives of gastric insects is horse gadfly.
2. Cavity. These parasites, in particular the so-called sheep gadfly, lay their eggs in the nostrils, eyes or ears. They differ in that they have an incomplete transformation cycle. In the cavity of animals and humans, the female lays live larvae.
3. Dermal. The most famous of them is the bull gadfly, the female of which attaches eggs to the hairs of the animal, and the hatched larva penetrates the skin of the animal and lives there until pupation.

Attention! Skin and stomach flies are insects with a full cycle of transformation, cavity gadfly - with an incomplete.

Description

To answer the question, what does a gadfly look like, you need to imagine a simple indoor fly. Gadgets are also flies with soft colors of various shades and sizes from 13 to 18 millimeters in length, depending on the species. Like all other flies, they have large faceted eyes and small transparent wings.

Food

A feature of gadflies is that adults do not eat at all. The fact is that hatching from a pupa, adult individuals almost immediately look for a partner, mate and, laying eggs, die. For this short life cycle, they have enough energy that they received during nutrition from the egg.

Habitat

Gadflies live on all continents except Antarctica. The 150 species studied by scientists settle near livestock farms or in places where their animal hosts are located, in meadows and pastures, near watering places.

Our help! By the way, only one species - a large human gadfly from South America - purposefully attacks people.

Breeding

Mating of adults occurs soon after birth. Depending on the region of residence, these may be different months of the year. It is optimal if at this time it is sufficiently humid and warm. It is considered optimal when the surface temperature of the animal’s body is at thirty degrees Celsius.

Years depending on the region of residence can be more or less long. In total, an adult insect can live a maximum of a month, and the usual period until mating is only three days.

It is interesting! Gadfly can fly immediately after the appearance of an adult from a pupa!

Each of the females of this parasite can lay up to seven hundred eggs on the body of one animal. At the same time, depending on the type of location, the egg laying is very different. But basically the principle of its location is the same - a small spine and a thick undercoat.

Therefore, the places of masonry on the body of the animal are most often as follows:

• groin;
• stomach;
• front of the hips.

Then, having penetrated under the skin, the larva along the vessels or nerve endings moves to the dorsal part of the host.

Development phases

As an example, consider the life cycle of skin types of gadfly, the development of insects of other subfamilies occurs in almost the same way. So, the female gadfly lays, as already mentioned above, its eggs in the animal’s hair.

Further, due to the high body temperature in the summer of the same cow, in just three days, a larva hatches from an egg.

After the birth of the larva, it immediately begins to dig under the skin of the unfortunate animal and begins to advance to the dorsal part of the host. At the second stage of their development, nymphs, reaching the top of their backs, make holes in the skin for breathing, which gives the animal a lot of unpleasant sensations. In addition, the larvae prepare peculiar capsules for pupation, climbing into which they pass to the next phase of their development.

In the third stage of development, the larvae pupate and fall out of the previously made holes onto the ground, under the legs of the animals in the stalls. Here, in a humid environment, they spend about a month in a sedentary state, after which they turn for the last time - into an adult.

The transformation into an imago occurs almost instantly, after which the adult gadfly flies to the mating sites.

It is interesting! Some scientists support the assertion that the pairing sites of gadflies have not changed for several generations, like fish spawning grounds.

Assault on man

The human gadfly does not directly contact people. This parasite infects the eggs of blood-sucking insects, in particular mosquitoes, which, when they bite, bring eggs of the gadfly under the skin of a person. Moreover, cunning larvae use a mosquito bite to penetrate.

Attention! Not only a large human gadfly “works” through mosquitoes, other species also use this technique. Therefore, in the human body, a gadfly of another species can also be mistaken.

The danger of gadflies

There is no doubt that the question of whether gadflies are dangerous should be answered in the affirmative. Indeed, during their development, they feed on various tissues of the animal: abdominal, subcutaneous or gastric.

With their huge population, when one animal was populated, the latter died. Sheep, whose hollow gadflies do great harm to livestock farming, are often particularly at risk.

Despite the fact that the female tries to divide her offspring into different owners, it happens that only one cow or horse can be in a certain place. In this case, the entire portion of the more than five hundred eggs will go to one animal. Sometimes this can lead to the death of the latter.

Control measures

In areas where gadflies are particularly bothered by farm animals, the most effective way to combat this is to have a daily routine inspection combined with brushing wool. Identified places of penetration of the larvae are lubricated with ordinary vaseline oil, which closes the pores and places of the bite, thus depriving the larva of oxygen entry under the skin.

Dead larvae should be carefully removed with tweezers from under the skin to prevent rotting and subsequent infection of the skin.

Advice! Regular nail polish is also a tool that can block the air supply to the larva of the gadfly, use it whenever possible.

At the end of the conversation about the insect gadfly, we suggest you watch an instructive video on the cycles of the development of the gadfly from the popular NatGeoWild TV channel.