''Musca albina'' is a widespread Old World species of

fly Flies are insects of the order Diptera, the name being derived from the Greek δι- ''di-'' "two", and πτερόν ''pteron'' "wing". Insects of this order use only a single pair of wings to fly, the hindwings having evolved into advanced m ...

, known from the dry areas of the Afrotropical realm,

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in t ...

and the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...

Central Asia Central Asia, also known as Middle Asia, is a region of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes the former ...

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

and

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

. It is a sun-loving species, and adults have been found clustering around domestic animals to feed on sweat and other secretions and on their feces. The Namibian population at least is clearly

kleptoparasitic Kleptoparasitism (etymologically, parasitism by theft) is a form of feeding in which one animal deliberately takes food from another. The strategy is evolutionarily stable when stealing is less costly than direct feeding, which can mean when fo ...

and very specific in its oviposition behaviour, laying eggs only in dung balls being interred by one out of several co-occurring dung-rolling

scarab beetle The family Scarabaeidae, as currently defined, consists of over 30,000 species of beetles worldwide; they are often called scarabs or scarab beetles. The classification of this family has undergone significant change in recent years. Several sub ...

species.Marshall, S.A. & Pont, A.C. 2013. The kleptoparasitic habits of ''Musca albina'' Wiedemann, 1830 (Diptera: Muscidae). ''

African Invertebrates ''African Invertebrates'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal that covers the Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, systematics, biogeography, ecology, Conservation biology, conservation, and paleontology, palaeontology of Afrotropical realm ...

'' 54 (2): 427–43

/ref>

References

Muscidae Insects of Africa Insects described in 1830 Diptera of Africa {{Muscidae-stub