Yellow-bowed smoothwing
The yellow-bowed smoothwing is a big hoverfly with a shiny black body. On its back it has three pairs of yellow marks shaped like little commas. It loves to visit flowers in meadows and hedges.
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Fun facts
Its babies are helpful in the garden, because they gobble up aphids that suck the juice out of plants.
Each of its wings is about 10.5 to 12 millimetres long.
It has a close cousin that looks almost the same, but the cousin's comma marks are white instead of yellow.
Its body has only a few fine, light hairs, so it looks quite smooth and shiny.
Most asked questions about Yellow-bowed smoothwing
?Does the yellow-bowed smoothwing sting?
No. It is a hoverfly, and hoverflies have no sting.
?What does the yellow-bowed smoothwing eat?
The grown-ups drink nectar and eat pollen from flowers. The larvae eat aphids.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Scaeva selenitica
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Syrphidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Syrphidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
Where the facts come from
- Scaeva selenitica (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 M.chifari. 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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