Straight-banded smoothtail
Epistrophe nitidicollis
The straight-banded smoothtail is a hoverfly with a shiny black back and a tummy striped black and yellow. It has a bright yellow face. It spends most of its time up in the trees and flies down to visit flowers.
Lives in
Europe, Asia and North America, in leafy woods and scrub
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It looks a little like a wasp, but it is a fly and cannot sting.
What does it eat?
The grown-up flies visit flowers such as buttercups, dandelions and brambles. The larvae eat aphids.
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)
Straight-banded smoothtail about 14 km/h (8.7 mph)
A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Each of its wings is about 8 to 11 millimetres long.
2
Its larvae are hungry hunters of aphids, the tiny bugs that suck on plants.
3
You can see the grown-ups flying in May and June.
4
It lives all the way from Ireland across Europe and Siberia to the Pacific, and from Alaska down to California.
you asked
Most asked questions about Straight-banded smoothtail
?Does the straight-banded smoothtail sting?
No. It is a hoverfly, and hoverflies have no sting.
?What does it eat?
The grown-ups visit flowers, and the larvae eat aphids.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Epistrophe nitidicollis
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Syrphidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Syrphidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, North America
Where the facts come from
- Epistrophe nitidicollis (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 Pjt56. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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