NEW FIND? disintegrating fly and hist friend????

[mpattongac]

Hello all,

I am not sure what I ran across today... but it is definitely interesting.

A holographic fly (sorry for no scientific names, I am far from any type of expert), that looked like it was quite literally decomposing was sitting right on top of a leaf.
This seemed odd to me, as most anything sitting on a leaf doesn't sit there for long. Not to mention it had been raining and windy the past two days.


With a closer look, I noticed what seemed like a "more put together" fly was sitting underneath the leaf and holding the holographic fly to it.
Take a look at the pictures and see if anything jumps out at you guys, but it did not seem to be eating it at all.

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I shook the accidentally shook the plant and got rather close while taking the pictures, and the flies both just sat there. Maybe the bottom one was dead too? I will check if they are still there tomorrow

[bandrow]

Greetings,

I'm no expert in this area, but I think what you found is something similar to this fungus - check out this link on Wikipedia:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophthora_muscae

I do know that in some cases involving ants, the fungus causes the animal to behave in some particular way, like climb to the end of a branch or grass blade and bite into it, securing itself, and then remain in that position until death. This apparently allows the spores of the fungus to be better dispersed from a higher vantage point.

Truly bizarre stuff!
Bandrow