Then they sleep until it begins to warm up again. When the weather gets cold, they stop eating and burrow underground. They spend several weeks eating their fill of snails, slugs, worms, and other soft-bodied creatures, growing quickly and building up their own reserves. This allows them to store and conserve their energy, helping them stay alive in spite of the harsh conditions they face.Īs noted above, firefly larvae emerge from their eggs in late summer or fall. With this in mind, there isn’t a whole lot they can do other than sleep.įireflies hibernate throughout the winter. Though their winter homes keep them from freezing, overwintering fireflies and larvae are still subjected to cold temperatures and food shortages. Most species overwinter underground where they can avoid freezing temperatures above the surface. They overwinter under layers of tree bark and emerge as the days begin to grow longer, clustering on the sunny sides of trees and around sap flows.Īgain, though, most fireflies spend the winter as larvae. Winter dark fireflies are so named not only because they lack light producing organs but because they are active earlier than any other firefly species–sometimes as early as late winter. This firefly has a much longer lifespan than most, spending about 16 months as larvae and about 8 months as adults. This is the common pattern for most fireflies that said, there are around 2,000 species in the world, and many of them do not follow this pattern perfectly.įor example, the winter dark firefly, which produces no light as an adult, spends one winter in the larval stage and one in the adult stage. In late spring, they enter the pupal stage, finally emerging as adults in early summer. Once spring returns, firefly larvae will emerge and begin feeding again. There, they wait for the weather to warm up again. Most firefly larvae stay underground throughout the winter months others take shelter beneath the bark of trees. Adult females are almost identical in appearance to common house flies, but males are distinctive in having an orange abdomen with a black mark down the centre.Video can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Epic Battle: Firefly larvae (Glow worm larvae ) vs L.fulica () The adult flies are very small (2.5 - 3mm) and are bright yellow with black markings.īreeds in animal dung in fields. However, a warm spell in late autumn may cause the adults to emerge prematurely, and they then invade buildings for shelter when the weather becomes colder. There are two generations each year, the later one usually over wintering as pupae in the soil. The Yellow Swarming fly a predacious species, the larvae feeding on aphids living on the roots of grasses. These are large flies (10mm long), with a shifting pattern of silver and grey-brown markings on the abdomen, and crinkly yellow hairs on the thorax. In spring the larvae develop quickly, usually killing the worms, then pupate in the surrounding soil. The young larvae bore into worms where they stay throughout the winter. Eggs are laid in the soil and hatch in about a week. The larvae of a cluster fly live as a parasite inside earthworms. However, once a building has been invaded, it is almost certain that more flies will return in subsequent years. The appearance of these lethargic flies causes considerable annoyance, although they are quite harmless.Īlthough we know why clustering flies seek shelter in this way, we do not know why they enter certain buildings in preference to other adjacent or nearby properties. The following spring, the flies start moving again, and the problem reoccurs. You may have experienced windowsills covered with buzzing flies spinning round and round in uncoordinated attempts to fly. Occasional warm days in the cooler months bring cluster flies out of their hiding places and they crawl or fall into rooms. Flies can also enter via sash window boxes, cracks round window frames and unused Venetian blinds or curtains. Indoors, they congregate in roof spaces and dark corners of attics and little-used rooms. These flies have the habit of coming indoors in late autumn to hibernate during the cold winter months, they are often found in groups or clusters of many hundreds, if not thousands.ĭuring the summer they live out-of-doors and can often be seen sunning themselves on fences, walls and tree trunks.
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