Four-speckled hover fly
Dioprosopa clavata
The four-speckled hover fly is a small hover fly from the Americas. Hover flies can stand still in the air like tiny helicopters. Many of them wear yellow and black stripes like a wasp, but they cannot sting.
Lives in
North and South America
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. Hover flies cannot bite or sting, even if they look a bit like wasps.
What does it eat?
Like other hover flies, the grown-ups visit flowers to drink nectar and eat pollen.
How fast is it?
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
Four-speckled hover fly about 14 km/h (8.7 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Its group, Dioprosopa, has only two known kinds, and both live in the Americas.
2
Until 2018 scientists counted it as part of a different group. Studies of its family tree gave it its own group.
3
It was first described by the Danish scientist Fabricius in 1794.
you asked
Most asked questions about Four-speckled hover fly
?Can the four-speckled hover fly sting?
No. Hover flies have no stinger and are harmless.
?Where does the four-speckled hover fly live?
In North and South America.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Dioprosopa clavata
- Named by
- Fabricius, 1794
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Syrphidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Syrphidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
Where the facts come from
- Dioprosopa (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Judy Gallagher. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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