Entomologists, Please: What Are These Tiny Flies?
September 12th, 2009 | Fly Fishing Guide | 3 Comments »I have very tiny flies in my house that I can’t find in any field guide. They are about the size of a flea. They are not fleas and not fruit flies. They take off like flies, so I am sure they are in the fly family.
I’ve seen two or three kinds all this size. Where can I find out what they are? Internet searches turn up only results on "fly fishing" and "midges" (I don’t think these are midges).
Thanks!
There are too many kinds of flies in the world to give you a good answer. However, I can help you help yourself. Since you’ve already tried field guides, you shouldn’t have too much trouble with the website I’m going to sent you to. Obviously, you know better what you saw than what you can describe, and hopefully you got a good enough look at the candidates’ forms to tell them apart from other less likely candidates. So, search within the following website until you see what resembles your candidate creatures:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/55/bgpage
This page shows you representative pictures of larger categories of flies. I suggest going down each of the sets of links until you feel you are in the right category, then narrowing your search further. I’ll assume that these flies of yours were types of gnats, but that may not be so. There are tiny types of parasitic wasps in this same size category which you will find here:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/12325/bgpage.
If they were gnats, clicking on Nematocera will show you several infraorders of tiny gnat-type flies. Clicking on any of infraorders within Nematocera will further narrow the search, and so on until you reach a category (or species) that answers your question.
If you mistook your insects for a type of fly and they were some other type of insect you can also work backwards within this same guide to search other groups of insects and apply the same principles.
I hope this information helps you identify your flies by yourself.
Good luck.
.
They are probably gnats.
References :
gnats. Or something very close to them. Here’s a good tip for you. Go buy some Peppermint extract and if you can, peppermint incense. Light the incense around the rooms with the most flies.
Also, sprinkle some Pepperming extract wherver you have seen them. Leave the pepperming extract opened on your kitchen counter.
Flies do not like peppermint
References :
There are too many kinds of flies in the world to give you a good answer. However, I can help you help yourself. Since you’ve already tried field guides, you shouldn’t have too much trouble with the website I’m going to sent you to. Obviously, you know better what you saw than what you can describe, and hopefully you got a good enough look at the candidates’ forms to tell them apart from other less likely candidates. So, search within the following website until you see what resembles your candidate creatures:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/55/bgpage
This page shows you representative pictures of larger categories of flies. I suggest going down each of the sets of links until you feel you are in the right category, then narrowing your search further. I’ll assume that these flies of yours were types of gnats, but that may not be so. There are tiny types of parasitic wasps in this same size category which you will find here:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/12325/bgpage.
If they were gnats, clicking on Nematocera will show you several infraorders of tiny gnat-type flies. Clicking on any of infraorders within Nematocera will further narrow the search, and so on until you reach a category (or species) that answers your question.
If you mistook your insects for a type of fly and they were some other type of insect you can also work backwards within this same guide to search other groups of insects and apply the same principles.
I hope this information helps you identify your flies by yourself.
Good luck.
.
References :
I am an entomologist. I specialized in identifying types of flies and the parasitic wasps that prey upon them.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/55/bgpage
http://bugguide.net/node/view/12325/bgpage