The Life-Story of Insects eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 102 pages of information about The Life-Story of Insects.

The Life-Story of Insects eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 102 pages of information about The Life-Story of Insects.

From the Hymenoptera we may pass on to the Diptera or Two-winged Flies, an order of which the vast number of species and in many cases the myriads of individuals force themselves on the observer’s notice.  F. Brauer (1863) divided the Diptera into two sub-orders[8]; of the first of these a Crane-fly or ‘Daddy-long-legs’ may be taken as typical, of the second an ordinary House-fly or Bluebottle.  All the larvae of the Diptera are legless, those of the Crane-fly group have well-developed hard heads, with biting mandibles, but in the House-fly section the larva is of the degraded vermiculiform type known as the maggot, not only legless, but without a definite head, the front end of the creature usually tapering to the mouth, where there are a pair of strong hooks, used for tearing up the food.  A few examples of each of these types must suffice in the present brief survey.  A few pages back (p. 66) reference was made to the production of galls on various plants, through the activity of larvae of the hymenopterous family Cynipidae.  Many plant-galls are due, however, to the presence of grubs of tiny dipterous insects, the Cecidomyidae or Gall-midges.  A cecid grub (fig. 19) has an elongate body with flexible, wrinkled cuticle, tapering somewhat at the two ends.  The head, if rather narrow, is distinct, and beneath the prothorax is a characteristic sclerite known as the ‘anchor process’ or ‘breast bone.’  Along either side of the body is a series of paired spiracles, each usually situated at the tip of a little tubular outgrowth of the cuticle; the hindmost spiracles are often larger than the others.  These little grubs live in family communities, their presence leading to some deformation of the plant that serves to shelter them.  A shrivelled fruit or an arrested and swollen shoot, such as may be due respectively to the Pear-midge (Diplosis pyrivora) or the Osier-midge (Rhabdophaga heterobia), is a frequent result of the irritation set up by these little grubs.  In a larva of the crane-fly family (Tipulidae, fig. 20) living underground and eating plant-roots, like the well-known ‘leather-jacket’ grubs of the large ‘Daddy-long-legs’ (Tipula) or burrowing into a rotting turnip or swollen fungus, like the more slender grub of a ‘Winter Gnat’ (Trichocera), the student notices a somewhat tough cuticle, a relatively small but distinct head, and frequently prominent finger-like processes on the tail-segment.  Further examination shows a striking modification in the arrangement of the spiracles.  Instead of a paired series on most of the body-segments, as in caterpillars and the vast majority of insects whether larval or adult, there are two large spiracles surrounded by the prominent tail-processes, and a pair of very small ones on the prothorax, the latter possibly closed up and useless.  This restriction of the breathing-holes to a front and hind pair (amphipneustic condition) or to a hind pair only (metapneustic type) is highly characteristic of the larvae of Two-winged flies.

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The Life-Story of Insects from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.