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housefly

 
Dictionary: house·fly   (hous'flī') pronunciation
n.
A common, widely distributed fly (Musca domestica) that frequents human dwellings, breeds in moist or decaying organic matter, and transmits a wide variety of diseases.


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Housefly (Musca domestica) on a doughnut
(click to enlarge)
Housefly (Musca domestica) on a doughnut (credit: Avril Ramage — © Oxford Scientific Films Ltd.)
Common dipteran (Musca domestica), accounting for about 90% of all flies in human dwellings. The adult is dull gray with dirty-yellowish areas on the abdomen. Body size ranges from 0.2 to 0.3 in. (5 – 7 mm), and the conspicuous compound eyes have some 4,000 facets. Because it has sponging or lapping mouthparts, it cannot bite. It is a problem wherever decomposing organic waste and garbage are allowed to accumulate. Its feet may carry millions of microorganisms, some of which cause diseases, including cholera, dysentery, and typhoid. Some insecticides are effective, but houseflies have developed resistance to others.

For more information on housefly, visit Britannica.com.

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: housefly
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housefly, common name of the fly Musca domestica, found in most parts of the world. The housefly, a scavenger, does not bite living animals but is dangerous because it carries bacteria and protozoans that cause many serious diseases, e.g., typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery. The housefly feeds by depositing a drop of digestive liquid on its food, which may be garbage, excrement, or other filth. Although most of the liquid drop is sucked back again through the insect's tubelike lower lip, or labium, a residue remains that may contain disease-causing organisms from previous meals. Disease is also transmitted on the fly's sticky foot pads and hairy body. Each female lays from 100 to 200 eggs in the garbage or manure on which the white larvae feed. With favorable temperatures, one generation or more per month may be produced. Metamorphosis is complete, i.e., development is in four stages. The housefly is classified in the phylum Arthropoda, class Insecta, order Diptera, family Muscidae. For methods of control see bulletins of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.


Wikipedia: Housefly
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Housefly
Conservation status
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Diptera
Suborder: Brachycera
Infraorder: Muscomorpha
Section: Schizophora
Subsection: Calyptratae
Superfamily: Muscoidea
Subfamily: Muscinae
Tribe: Muscini
Genus: Musca
Species: M. domestica
Binomial name
Musca domestica
Linnaeus, 1758
Subspecies
  • calleva Walker 1849
  • domestica Linnaeus 1758

The housefly (also house fly, house-fly or common housefly), Musca domestica, is a Diptera of the Brachycera suborder; the most common of all flies found in homes, it is indeed one of the most widely distributed insects, found all over the world, and considered a pest that can carry serious diseases.

Contents

Physical description

Portrait of a Housefly (Musca domestica)
Anatomy of a housefly

The adults are 8–12 mm long. Their thorax is gray, with four longitudinal dark lines on the back. The underside of their abdomen is yellow[citation needed], and their whole body is covered with hair-like projections. The females are slightly larger than the males, and have a much larger space between their red compound eyes. The mass of pupae can range from about 8 to 20 mg under different conditions.[1]

Like most Diptera (meaning "two-winged"), houseflies have only one pair of wings; the hind pair is reduced to small halteres that aid in flight stability. Characteristically, the media vein (M1+2 or fourth long vein of the wing) shows a sharp upward bend.

Species that appear similar to the housefly include:

  • The lesser house fly, Fannia canicularis, is somewhat smaller, more slender, and the media vein is straight.
  • The stable fly, Stomoxys calcitrans, has piercing mouthparts and the media vein is only slightly curved.

Life cycle

Each female fly can lay approximately 500 eggs in several batches of about 75 to 150 [2]. The eggs are white and are about 1.2 mm in length. Within a day, larvae (maggots) hatch from the eggs; they live and feed in (usually dead and decaying) organic material, such as garbage or feces. They are pale-whitish, 3–9 mm long, thinner at the mouth end, and have no legs. They live at least one week. At the end of their third instar, the maggots crawl to a dry cool place and transform into pupae, colored reddish or brown and about 8 mm long. The adult flies then emerge from the pupae. (This whole cycle is known as complete metamorphosis.) The adults live from two weeks to a month in the wild, or longer in benign laboratory conditions. After having emerged from the pupae, the flies cease to grow; small flies are not young flies, but are indeed the result of getting insufficient food during the larval stage.[3]

The male mounts the female from behind

Some 36 hours after having emerged from the pupa, the female is receptive for mating. The male mounts her from behind to inject sperm. Copulation takes between a few seconds to a couple of minutes.[3] Normally the female mates only once, storing the sperm to use it repeatedly for laying several sets of eggs. Males are territorial: they will defend a certain territory against other males and will attempt to mount any females that enter that territory.[citation needed]

Housefly pupae killed by parasitic wasp larvae. Each pupa has one hole through which a single adult wasp emerged; feeding occurs during the wasp's larva stage.
Illustration of a housefly

The flies depend on warm temperatures; generally, the warmer the temperature the faster the flies will develop. In winter, most of them survive in the larval or the pupa stage in some protected warm location.[3]

Diet

Houseflies feed on feces, open sores, sputum, and moist decaying organic matter such as spoiled food, eggs and flesh. [4] Houseflies can take in only liquid foods. They spit out saliva on solid foods to predigest it, and then suck it back in. They also regurgitate partly digested matter and pass it again to the abdomen.

Sex determination

The housefly is an object of biological research, mainly because of one remarkable quality: the sex determination mechanism. Although a wide variety of sex determination mechanisms exist in nature (e.g. male and female heterogamy, haplodiploidy, environmental factors) the way sex is determined is usually fixed within one species. However, the housefly exhibits many different mechanisms for sex determination, such as male heterogamy (like most insects and mammals), female heterogamy (like birds) and maternal control over offspring sex. This makes the housefly one of the most suitable species to study the evolution of sex determination.[5]

Evolution

Even though the order of flies (Diptera) is much older, true houseflies are believed to have evolved in the beginning of the Cenozoic era, some 65 million years ago.[6] House flies feed on liquid or semi-liquid substances beside solid material which has been softened by saliva or vomit. Because of their high intake of food, they deposit feces constantly, one of the factors that makes the insect a dangerous carrier of pathogens. Although they are domestic flies, usually confined to the human habitations, they can fly for several miles from the breeding place. They are active only in daytime and rest at night e.g. at the corners of rooms, ceiling hangings, etc.

Housefly as a vector of disease

Mechanical transmission of organisms on its hairs, mouthparts, vomitus and feces:

As a causative agent of diseases

Accidental myiasis.

References

  1. ^ Larraín, Patricia & Salas, Claudio (2008). "House Fly (male gang L.) (Diptera: Muscidae) development in different types of manure [Desarrollo de la Mosca Doméstica (Musca domestica L.) (Díptera: Muscidae) en Distintos Tipos de Estiércol]". Chilean Journal of Agricultural Research 68: 192-197. doi:10.4067/S0718-58392008000200009. ISSN 0718-5839. 
  2. ^ Stuart M Bennett (2003). "Housefly". http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th6a.htm. 
  3. ^ a b c Anthony DeBartolo, BUZZOFF! THE HOUSEFLY HAS MADE A PEST OF HIMSELF FOR 25 MILLION YEARS, Chicago Tribune, June 5, 1986
  4. ^ [1]
  5. ^ Dübendorfer A, Hediger M, Burghardt G, Bopp D. Musca domestica, a window on the evolution of sex-determining mechanisms in insects. Int J Dev Biol. 2002, 46(1):75–9.
  6. ^ Brian M. Wiegmann, David K. Yeates, Jeffrey L. Thorne, Hirohisa Kishino, a fly's head, showing compound eyes and hair
  7. ^ Szalanski, A.L., C.B. Owens, T. McKay, and C.D. Steelman. 2004. Detection of Campylobacter sp., and E. coli O157:H7 in filth flies (Diptera: Muscidae) by polymerase chain reaction. Medical and Veterinary Entomology 18: 241–246.
  8. ^ Brazil, S.M. C.D. Steelman, and A.L. Szalanski. 2007. Detection of pathogen DNA from filth flies (Diptera: Muscidae) using filter paper spot cards. Journal of Agricultural and Urban Entomology 24:(1) (in press).

External links


Translations: Housefly
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - stueflue

Nederlands (Dutch)
huisvlieg

Français (French)
n. - mouche domestique

Deutsch (German)
n. - Stubenfliege

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (εντομ.) (κοινή) μύγα

Italiano (Italian)
mosca comune

Português (Portuguese)
n. - mosca (f) doméstica (Entom.)

Русский (Russian)
комнатная муха

Español (Spanish)
n. - mosca doméstica

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - husfluga

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
家蝇

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 家蠅

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 집파리

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - イエバエ

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) ذبابه المنازل‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮זבוב הבית, זבוב המתפתח בחומרים נרקבים‬


 
 
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Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Housefly" Read more
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