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Fly

*** Shopping-Tip: Fly
:''This article is about the insect. For other meanings, see Fly (disambiguation)'' Image:Medfly.jpg thumb|200px|The [[Mediterranean fruit fly, or "medfly", ''Ceratitis capitata'']] Image:Empis tesselata male (aka).jpg thumb|Dance fly male ''Empis tesselata'' Image:A Fly by Matthias Zimmermann.jpg thumb|The flesh-fly, ''Sarcophaga carnaria'' As defined by entomologists, a '''fly''' (plural '''flies''') is any species of insect of the Order_(biology) order Diptera. These typically have one pair of true wings, with the hind wings modified into halteres. Flies are common amongst humans and some can cause the spread of serious diseases. The housefly house-fly (''Musca domestica'') and mosquito are particularly common amongst humans. Other flies, such as the horse-fly (Family Tabanidae), can inflict painful bites. The larva of a fly is commonly called a '''maggot'''. Flies rely heavily on sight for survival. The compound eyes of flies are composed of thousands of individual lenses and are very sensitive to movement. Some flies have very accurate 3D vision. A few, like ''Ormia ochracea'', have very advanced hearing organs. The diet of flies varies heavily between species. The horse-fly eats bits of flesh torn off of its prey, mosquitoes feed on blood and nectar, and the housefly eats a semi-digested liquid created by mixing-enzyme rich saliva with its food. In addition to being an essential part of the food chain, some species of flies spread pollen, hasten the decomposition of plants, animals, and dung, and, in the case of about 5000 species of Tachina flies, eat other insects.

Maggots
The fly life cycle is composed of four stages: egg, larva (commonly known as a maggot), pupa, adult. The eggs are laid in decaying flesh, animal dung, manure, or pools of stagnant water - whatever has ample food for the larva. Some types of maggots found on corpses can be of great use to forensic science forensic scientists. By their stage of development, these maggots can be used to give an indication of the time elapsed since death, as well as the place the organism died. The size of the house fly maggot is 9.5-19.1mm (3/8 to 3/4 inch). At the height of the summer season, a generation of flies (egg to adult) may be produced in 12-14 days. Maggot identification uses a classification called "Instar" stages. An instar I is about 2-5 mm long; instar II 6-14 mm; instar III 15-20 mm. These measure about 2-3 days, 3-4 days, and 4-6 days (for average houseflies or bottleflies) since the eggs were laid. By use of this data, plus other signs, the approximate time since death can be estimated by forensic scientists. Various maggots cause damage in agriculture agricultural crop production, including root maggots in rapeseed and midge maggots in wheat. Some maggots are leaf miners. Maggots are bred commercially, as a popular bait in angling, and a food for carnivourous pets such as reptiles or birds.

Use in medicine
Through the ages maggots have been used in medicine in order to clean out necrotic wounds. For more information, see Maggot therapy.

Fly-like insects
Image:House fly leg.jpg thumb|200px|House fly leg Image:Flies around 60 watt light globe.jpg thumb|200px|Flies attracted to a light in summer The word "fly" also refers to insects of various orders other than Diptera. Entomologists try to distinguish between true flies and other orders by hyphenating the names of true flies (house-fly, horse-fly, crane-fly), but giving the members of other orders unhyphenated names, either with two unconnected words (caddis fly, alder fly) or with a single, concatenated name (dragonfly, stonefly). *firefly: beetle Coleoptera:Lampyridae *caddis fly: Trichoptera *dragonfly and damselfly: Odonata *butterfly: Lepidoptera *stonefly: Plecoptera *mayfly: Ephemeroptera *symphyta sawfly: Hymenoptera:Tenthredinidae *scorpionfly and hangingfly: Mecoptera *alder fly, Dobson fly, and fish fly: Megaloptera

Rarest known fly
The world's rarest known fly family is Eurychoromyidae-Broad-headed Flies [http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/Diptera/minorfam/eurychor.htm]

Flies in art and popular culture
In art, extremely life-like flies have sometimes been depicted in the trompe l'oeil paintings of the 15th century. An example is the painting ''Portrait of a Carthusian'' by Petrus Christus, showing a fly sitting on a fake frame. [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/optg/hod_49.7.19.htm] The 1958 science fiction film ''The Fly (1986 film) The Fly'', remade in 1986, revolves around the accidental merger of a human and a fly. In 2001, Garnet Hertz produced an art project in which a complete web server was implanted into a dead fly. [http://www.fly.co.uk Fly | Global Music Culture] was one of the UK's first webzines when it started in 1995. It now focusses on leftfield music from around the world.

External links
{{commons|fly}}
- Pictures of Flies and Other Observations
- Picture: Fly on a window
- Fly with implanted web server, by Garnet Hertz.
- How to get rid of flies Category:Flies Category:Insects id:Lalat ca:Mosca da:Flue de:Fliegen et:Kärbes es:Mosca fr:Mouche he:זבוב io:Musho lt:Musė mg:Lalitra nl:Tweevleugeligen no:Fluer ja:ハエ pt:Mosca ru:Муха sv:Fluga

*** Shopping-Tip: Fly