Common eastern physocephala
The common eastern physocephala is a thick-headed fly with a yellow face and a black body with thin white stripes. It hangs around flowers, where bees come to feed. It has a sneaky trick: it lays its egg inside a bee.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The female lays an egg inside a bee's belly, and the larva grows up inside the bee.
When the larva is big, the bee dies and the larva turns into a pupa inside it.
A bee with a larva inside sometimes starts to dig into the ground and visits different flowers than before.
It does not pick special flowers. It waits for bees on many kinds.
Most asked questions about Common eastern physocephala
?Is the common eastern physocephala dangerous?
Not to people. It cannot bite or sting. It only uses bees to raise its young.
?Where does the common eastern physocephala live?
In the eastern United States, often near flowering plants.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Physocephala tibialis
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Conopidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Conopidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Physocephala tibialis (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 Rhododendrites. 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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