Flies tahini or hedgehogs (lat. Tachinidae). Hedgehogs - insects useful against pests "tahina flies" in books
All those who believe that flies are useless creatures are greatly mistaken. Tahini flies are very useful, especially for horticultural and horticultural crops. Their larvae are natural enemies of many insects that cause significant damage. agriculture.
They were called hedgehogs for the many hard bristles that cover the entire body. In general, their appearance differs little from appearance common flies. In total, the family of tachin flies includes more than 8200 species. Depending on the species, their body length varies from 3 millimeters to 2 centimeters. The abdomen consists of 4 rings.
Photo by Stephen Cresswell These flies love sunny but not hot weather. At this time, tahini can most often be seen on plant flowers, where they feed on pollen and nectar. But not all species are most active during daylight hours.
According to the method of infecting other insects with their larvae, all acorns can be divided into 3 groups:
- The former lay their eggs on the leaves of plants, where caterpillars of sawflies, caterpillars of butterflies and other insect pests crawl nearby. Their eggs are so small that caterpillars, eating a leaf, may not even notice them.
- The latter specialize in soil insects and lay their eggs in the ground, where the larvae that hatch after a while begin to independently search for their future food base (adult insects or their larvae).
- Still others lay their eggs directly IN or ON the body of the insect.
Photo by Leslie Butler Very rarely, but there are also viviparous species of these flies. Most often, in one caterpillar victim, larvae of only one type of fly are found, and even then, a little - no more than 2-3 individuals.
Photo by JYoung Thus, by regulating the number of insect pests, tahini bring great benefit. They are especially good for fighting the Colorado potato beetle, gypsy moth, May beetles, bedbugs, butterflies and other pests.
These unusual insects have two official names: tahini (lat. Tachinidae) and hedgehogs. The second name eloquently indicates that these creatures, firstly, can fly, and secondly, that their body is covered with short, hard bristles that look like thorns.
Tachins are a numerous and widespread family of the Diptera order, which has more than eight thousand already discovered and described species, and more more waiting for its turn to make history.
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Once inside the insect host, the larva does not betray its presence in any way, but exactly until it is fully mature. Having received everything that is possible, she secretes enzymes in the insides of the victim, which completely digest all their contents. And the “tenant” herself safely moves into the soil and turns into a chrysalis.
But tahini have positive sides. They feed on pollen and serve as pollinators at high altitudes where bees do not normally reach. In addition, their dislike of certain insects makes them useful in controlling pests such as Colorado potato beetles, bed bugs, or gypsy moths.
Many, many years ago, when I was just starting entomology as a boy, I saw a magnificent caterpillar, thick and bright, burrowing into the ground. "Yeah, - Think, - it is she who buries herself in order to turn into a chrysalis". I pulled it out, put it in a box, and at home - in a jar of earth: let it pupate here, and then some huge, unknown to me butterfly will come out of the chrysalis, probably also very beautiful, and then I will put it in my collection.
Imagine my disappointment when, a few months later, in a jar tied with gauze, instead of a butterfly, a good dozen hefty hairy flies buzzed! I poured out the earth from the jar - the skin of the chrysalis was empty. So, the future butterfly was eaten by fly larvae - wow, how angry I was with them then! So my first acquaintance with flies-tachins took place.
But it is precisely this that is useful to humans for a huge (about 5 thousand species) family of tachin flies, that they exterminate a myriad of pests of agricultural crops. These flies are, as it were, natural "regulators" of the population of a wide variety of insects, vigilant and tireless, which under natural conditions will never allow any kind of insect to breed excessively, suddenly finding very favorable conditions for reproduction. It is only difficult for them to work in places that have been greatly altered by man, and even in those cases when a foreign pest, new to these places, has appeared in the fields, brought here in some way and multiplied. But scientists brought to the affected fields those types of tahini that lived in the homeland of a foreign pest and fed on it there. The settlers quickly settled in and got down to business, the harvest was saved. Other methods of breeding these beneficial flies in special "tachinaria".
Outwardly, tachins are similar to house, meat or carrion flies, but in general they are more stocky and covered with elastic bristles. Russian name- hedgehogs - they got it precisely because of these bristles, resembling hedgehog needles under a magnifying glass. The color of tahini is different - gray, black, brown; they also have different sizes: from small flies to huge two-centimeter flies, “flies-sokotuh”, echinomy (by the way, exterminating caterpillars of harmful forest silkworms).
In spring, tahini are the first flying insects to appear in our reserve near Isilkul. The forest is still completely bare, the local primroses have not yet appeared - the yellow suns of adonis and the light cream bells of sleep-grass, there is still snow in places and only open glades dry up, how, having missed flying living creatures over the winter, you instantly and with pleasure notice the first movement in on withered last year's grasses - the flight of a tahina fly, looking for its prey. A fly flies attentively, bending around dry blades of grass, clods of earth, from time to time sits down, rises again and flies between blades of grass - and so on for hours. You get tired of watching and you leave, but the Tsokotukha has much more patience: she will explore the clearing for many days, perhaps all spring, until she finds what she needs.
Some species of aquatic flies lay their eggs directly on plants, in the habitats of the caterpillars they need, and the tachini larvae that emerge from the eggs find them themselves. Other species stick their eggs directly onto the integument of the "host". More than once I had to find caterpillars with a bunch of tahini eggs tightly glued to it - it was not possible to separate them with either a needle or a scalpel, without risking breaking through the caterpillar's skin. Many species of aerflies stick their eggs in the air - on a flying "host". An interesting pursuit of tahin for taking off fillies was described by Professor P.I. Marikovsky in his book Insect Friends. And I managed to photograph even such a scene in the micro-reserve near Novosibirsk; a ktyr sits on the finger of my left hand, biting some kind of fly he caught (he used the finger I deliberately put out as a landing site), and next to him, on the same finger, two small tahinkas guard him, chasing him everywhere, and with the obvious intention of putting off eggs on it - most likely, also on the fly. Drawing from this curious and rare photo- on this page.
As you can see, tahini don't always haunt and infect harmful insects, among their victims there are also useful ones, such as, for example, the same ktyr hunter. But still, entomologists classify the vast majority of hedgehogs as very useful species. Especially great is the importance of tahini in the extermination of unpaired Siberian and pine silkworms, meadow moth, winter cutworm, a bread bug-turtle and many other pests of agriculture and forestry.
For the reproduction of tahini, it is very important to keep unmowed part of the meadows with wild nectarifers, on which adult flies feed, especially umbrella flies - carrots, angelica, angelica, hemlock, cow parsnip. In such untouched corners you sometimes see an amazing picture: a magnificently lace umbrella of a carrot, and on it a good dozen (or even two or three dozen) urchins sit - small, medium and large. In the center, as the “hostess of the feast”, a huge echinomia - a black giantess with a red belly, gray prickly knephilia and ernestia, small thieves sat around, and round-bellied phasia - a thunderstorm of plant bugs - hold wings not like a fly, widely spaced to the side perpendicular to the body . By the way, these same flies from the genus phasia attach their eggs only to flying bugs, and not just anywhere, but under the underside of the elytra, from where the bug is not able to scrape off its deadly load, which it receives quite unexpectedly, during a lightning air attack of phasia .
A motley company of tahini feeds on a fragrant umbrella, slowly sucks nectar, and eggs ripen in fly bellies. And then, when these eggs have already been laid, the children of takhin will come out of them - larvae, burrow into the body of a forest bug, butterfly caterpillars, sawfly or beetle larvae and begin to eat it from the inside, leaving the vital organs "for a snack". From the hostess, who recently still bravely crawled through the plants, only the skin will remain. Mature tahini larvae will crawl out of it, burrow into the ground and turn into pupae there.
By the way, many flies, including tahin, sirphs, even house flies pupae are not quite common. That is, a chrysalis is like a chrysalis - a pale, motionless and soft likeness of a fly, but it is placed in a very strong leathery oval bag. And the “secret” is that the larva does not weave this cocoon, but swells up, gets fatter and does something with its skin that it separates from the body and becomes dry and hard, not at all like a larva. Inside this hardened shell, further transformations of the insect take place. Entomologists call such fly cases puparia (navel is a chrysalis in Latin). And puparia lie in the ground - brown durable barrels - all autumn and winter.
And next spring and summer, new armadas of young barnacles, having fed on meadow flowers, carefully comb forests, fields, meadows, and each of them will certainly find its victim - the future food for the fly's offspring.
This is a representative of a group of insects that benefit humans. It destroys a large number of harmful insects, this increases the efficiency of numerous areas of production. These flies constantly watch for such representatives as: leafworms, moths and silkworms. Tahini flies live and feed mainly in places of flowering garlic or dill, and of other zonal crops.
Finding a host for a fly is not an easy task, so some leave their offspring on leaves that are consumed by insect hosts, for example, this example can be attributed to a caterpillar. When she eats a leaf, fly larvae settle inside her, then they feed on the body of the caterpillar, as a result of which she dies, and the larvae go free. There are also such species of tachin flies that have adapted to lay their larvae directly into the body of the host.
However, there are also species that find the host themselves, and these larvae first stick to his body, and then penetrate into it. These flies are very prolific, at a time the female can lay about 500 eggs, of course, only a third of them will survive, but the most tenacious will get into the body of the host insect and will destroy it from the inside, which is why the tahina fly is considered a killer of harmful to humans and crop of insects.
Irina Leonidovna Ermolaeva, a specialist in plant protection against pests and diseases, tells.
In our gardens there are not only visible enemies, but also friends. These are various predatory beetles, ground beetles, hoverfly flies, ladybugs, ants and spiders, which, eating, invisibly help us, destroying pests on different stages development.
To attract beneficial insects and to encourage them active work nectarifers should be sown, i.e. plants that attract such helpers. These are phacelia, mustard, buckwheat, carrot seeds, onions, etc. Moreover, it is necessary to create a flower-nectar conveyor - sow them in different dates between rows or empty spaces.
fly tahina
One of the many beneficial insects is the tahina fly. The range of pests that it destroys is simply huge, and its effectiveness is high. Suffice it to say that the number of silkworms, sawflies, leafworms, moths, tahini moths is kept under constant control. The survival and accumulation of these flies is facilitated by the presence of flowering carrots, parsnips, goutweed and other umbrella crops.
The body of tachin flies is usually covered with strong bristles, and therefore they are also called sand flies. The family of flies-tachin has about 5 thousand species.
Tahini flies find their hosts in different ways. Some types of flies lay their very small eggs on the surface of the leaf where the caterpillar feeds. Caterpillars, eating the leaf, swallow the eggs, then larvae appear inside the caterpillar, which feed on the body of the host insect, which leads to its death. Other species lay their eggs directly into the body of the insect host. And, finally, there are types of tahini, the larvae of which themselves find the owner and bite into his body.
Tahini flies lay a large number of eggs, and therefore one fly can kill many caterpillars.
Ants and spiders
Ants and spiders do a great job of destroying pests. Coriander and anise can be sown next to cabbage. When sown at the same time, they bloom from May to September. Their flowers feed many beneficial insects and do not attract butterflies whose caterpillars damage cabbages.
Ants are nurses. They build their houses in the soil and above it and are of great benefit. Numerous passages of ants make the soil looser, and this improves the breathing conditions for plant roots. Getting food for themselves, ants bring a huge number of insect pests and their larvae into the passages and chambers of the anthill: the inhabitants of only one anthill destroy an average of up to 20 million garden pests per year. But it is worth watching for an increase in the number of ants, this can lead to oppression of the garden, and because of the favorite delicacy of ants that aphids secrete, they also contribute to the settlement of aphid colonies. Here you need to think about whether to leave the ants in their areas or not.
Spiders. A significant part of the prey of spiders of the families of jumping spiders (Salticidae), funnel spiders (Agelenidae), wolf spiders (Licosidae), sidewalk spiders (Thomisidae) are such dangerous pests, like a harmful turtle, Colorado potato beetle, meadow moth, different kinds moths, many Diptera.
Attention! I want to warn you that beneficial insects, like pests, overwinter in the bark, leaves, in the soil on garden plot. And in the summer, you should not catch all the insects you see in the garden, because you can leave the garden without defenders - beneficial insects, which are called entomophages.
ladybugs
Everyone knows what it looks like ladybug, but not everyone is aware of the benefits it brings. She is fertile and lays eggs in small groups of 30, the eggs are yellow, similar to eggs. colorado potato beetle and hawthorn butterflies.
An adult beetle eats 100-200 aphids per day, the larvae are ten times more voracious than mites, whiteflies (Aleyrodidae) and mealybugs (Coccoidea).
Ladybugs will be attracted to our garden by plants of the Compositae family: daisies, tansy, or yarrow.
Ladybug Larva
ground beetles
These workers can be seen in the process of digging or loosening the soil. These are nocturnal predators that prey on insects living in the soil: moth pupae, moths, larvae of click beetles (wireworms), gall midges. Destroy slugs and caterpillars. The menu of one ground beetle per day is about one hundred moth larvae, 5 adult moth caterpillars and 5-6 weevil larvae. And the larvae are much more voracious than adults, they sit in dug holes and grab insects crawling past.
To have more ground beetles in the garden, take care of soil fertility. Those. apply in spring and autumn organic fertilizers, humus, etc.
lacewing
This is a gentle and slender insect. The color is pale green. Adult insects feed on the nectar of flowers, aphids, pollen, as well as the mites and aphids themselves, destroying up to 4000 individuals per day. The larvae suck spider mites and aphids. The lacewing prefers cool shady places covered with thickets of ferns for breeding.
flies-ktyrs
A two-centimeter ktyr cannot be confused with any other fly. Powerful paws armed with bristles and suckers. A strong proboscis, pointed at the end, protrudes from the flattened head. They ktyr can pierce even such a strong shell as beetles have.
Ktyri, destroying a lot of harmful insects, bring undoubted benefits. Their menu includes beetles, flies, fillies, leafhoppers, butterflies and even caterpillars. Not only adult insects are useful, but also larvae that live in the soil and destroy the larvae of click beetles, beetles and dark beetles, locust eggs and caterpillars that gnaw on the scoop.
Interesting. The largest ktyri reach 5 centimeters. You should not touch the ktyri with your hands - their bite is as painful as a prick of a bee sting.
Such flies are attracted to plants from the aster family - goldenrod, chamomile, daisies, as well as various types of mint - catnip, peppermint and spearmint.
Trichogramma
This is an egg-eater, the mass reproduction of which has already been put on an industrial basis. Trichogramma females lay their eggs in the eggs of many pests - codling moth, yellow and pale-legged gooseberry sawfly, meadow moth, cabbage scoop, cabbage whitefish and others.
Since these insects are very small, they take nectar from small open flowers such as anise, dill. A good shelter for them are plants of the celery family.
From the above, it follows that the more nursery plants in the garden, the less pest problems you will have. These plants can be placed along the edges of the garden or border areas with vegetables. It is necessary to select plant species in such a way that they bloom for a long time, replacing each other. Marigolds, alyssum, tansy, chamomile, daisies are suitable for this. Savory, lavender, hyssop, basil, rosemary, oregano bloom for a long time.
You can name many more useful insects - our helpers. But their number is still less than pests. Birds, frogs and toads, dragonflies, spiders - many animals help to keep the garden and vegetable garden clean from pests and healthy. But they themselves are not protected from chemicals.
Chemical treatments primarily destroy beneficial insects, since for a number of reasons they are more sensitive to chemistry and, in addition, their numbers are much smaller. Against the background of an abundant food base and the absence of natural enemies, the pests remaining after processing begin to multiply intensively. First of all, this applies to sucking pests - aphids and mites, which give several generations during the growing season.
This information is for lovers of chemistry and for those who consider it necessary to destroy everything that flies, crawls, jumps around the site.
