Christopher Intagliata: Once you consider pollinators–what involves thoughts? Bees, butterflies, perhaps hummingbirds. Nicely how about… flies? 

C. Scott Clem: Flies normally are the second most essential group of pollinating bugs. So I believe they deserve extra credit score than they usually get.

Intagliata: C. Scott Clem is an insect ecologist on the College of Georgia. He is been finding out a kind of fly often called a “hoverfly.” You might have truly seen them earlier than, masquerading as bees and wasps. 

Clem: They are usually yellow and black coloured, and so they’re sort of totally different from different flies in that regard. They’re these little bugs you usually discover visiting flowers or typically they’re going to truly land in your pores and skin searching for the salt in your pores and skin.

Intagliata: By finding out isotopes within the bugs’ legs and wings, Clem and his colleagues have now decided that a few of these flies make a exceptional autumn migration. They appear to originate close to Ontario, Canada—after which they fly a whole lot of miles south, to central Illinois. And it is doable some journey even additional—1000’s of miles, maybe. 

Clem: They rise up into excessive altitude air currents. They’re in a position to surf on these winds mainly, and it takes them these huge distances.

Intagliata: The outcomes seem within the journal Ecological Monographs. [C. Scott Clem et al., Do Nearctic hover flies (Diptera: Syrphidae) engage in long-distance migration? An assessment of evidence and mechanisms]

As for why the flies migrate? Clem says they may be pursuing the aphids they eat southward…or perhaps they’re following the blooms of nectar-rich flowers. 

Clem: In the event that they’re shifting they could possibly be shifting these ecological companies throughout the continent on an annual foundation.

Intagliata: The scientists write that the flies could possibly be transporting billions of grains of pollen throughout the continent, all whereas working to exterminate pests. So even when hoverflies’ bee-like look is mere mimicry—the ecological companies they supply might very properly be the actual deal.

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]