''Eristalinus sepulchralis'' is a

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an species of

hoverfly Hoverflies, also called flower flies or syrphids, make up the insect family Syrphidae. As their common name suggests, they are often seen hovering or nectaring at flowers; the adults of many species feed mainly on nectar and pollen, while the l ...

. The species are

brown Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors Orange (colour), orange and black. In the ...

ish-

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

from a close up, and look like a

wasp A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder ...

. From a distance though, they are

yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In t ...

ish-

black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...

coloured, and look like a

bumble bee A bumblebee (or bumble bee, bumble-bee, or humble-bee) is any of over 250 species in the genus ''Bombus'', part of Apidae, one of the bee families. This genus is the only extant group in the tribe Bombini, though a few extinct related genera ...

. The species can be found throughout Europe in the

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, Central, Southern and

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and across the

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to Kamchatka, Japan, China and India.

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, and the

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Technical Description

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For terms see

Morphology of Diptera Dipteran morphology differs in some significant ways from the broader insect morphology, morphology of insects. The Diptera is a very large and diverse Order (biology), order of mostly small to medium-sized insects. They have prominent compound ey ...

Wing length 6 ·5–8 mm. Eyes patterned with conspicuous black spots and hairy all over in both sexes. Tergites black with green or other reflections. Tergites 2 and 3 with a dull spot. Male eyes well separated on frons. Thoracic dorsum with five grey stripes. The male genitalia and larva are figured by Pérez-Bañón et al. (2003). The larva is figured by Hartley (1961)

Biology

Habitat is wetland, fen, river and pond margins. Anthropophilic and occurring where stock is pastured, along polluted ditches and in the vicinity of slurry pits. Flowers visited include white umbellifers, ''Achillea millefolium'', ''Allium'', ''Armeria maritima'', ''Bellis perennis'', ''Bidens cernua'', ''Caltha'', ''Cochlearia danica'', ''Crataegus'', ''Euphorbia'', ''Galium'', ''Leontodon'', ''Origanum vulgare'', ''Potentilla erecta'', ''Ranunculus'', ''Rosa'', ''Rubus fruticosus'', ''Salix'', ''Senecio jacobaea'', ''Solidago virgaurea'', ''Sorbus aucuparia'', ''Taraxacum'', ''Tussilago'', ''Valeriana dioica''.de Buck, N. (1990) Bloembezoek en bestuivingsecologie van Zweefvliegen (Diptera, Syrphidae) in het bijzonder voor België. ''Doc.Trav.'' IRSNB, no.60, 1-167. The flight period is mid-April to September (March to October in southern Europe). The larvae are associated with rotting vegetation in a ponds and small water bodies rich in nutrients.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Eristalinus Sepulchralis Diptera of Europe Eristalini Flies described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus