Subject: Golden Dung Fly, Scatophaga stercoraria

Location: Upshur County, West Virginia

Stock Number: Photo above: 07-12823. See also three photos below.

Comment: As fly ecologist Harold Oldroyd wrote in 1964, "These flies are well named, because the dung is everything to them." They mate upon it, their eggs are laid on it, their larvae feed in it, and their pupae develop in the soil underneath it.

Even so, the adults do sometimes stray from dung. All four photos on this page were taken at a Sugar Maple seep late in the winter, where a variety of flies were attracted by the sap oozing from holes made by a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker. The Golden Dung Flies weren't attracted by the sap, however. They were drawn by the presence of lots of other flies to stalk and kill, and they attacked many that were larger than they were. In their hunting methods they behaved almost like Tiger Beetles.

In North America this species is found from Alaska and Labrador to Mexico and the Caribbean. It is also found in Europe and Asia. Typically there are four or five generations per year, and adults may be active on warm winter days.