Related topics: fruit flies

Study shows how proteins guide electrons to the right place

Cells need energy to function. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg can now explain how energy is guided in the cell by small atomic movements to reach its destination in the protein. Imitating these structural changes ...

How fruit flies control the brain's 'steering wheel'

When we walk down the street, we have an internal sense of which way we are heading from looking at street signals and physical landmarks and also a sense of where we'd like to go. But how does the brain coordinate between ...

page 1 from 40

Fly

Nematocera (includes Eudiptera) Brachycera

True flies are insects of the order Diptera (Greek: di = two, and pteron = wing), possessing a single pair of wings on the mesothorax and a pair of halteres, derived from the hind wings, on the metathorax.

The presence of a single pair of wings distinguishes true flies from other insects with "fly" in their name, such as mayflies, dragonflies, damselflies, stoneflies, whiteflies, fireflies, alderflies, dobsonflies, snakeflies, sawflies, caddisflies, butterflies or scorpionflies. Some true flies have become secondarily wingless, especially in the superfamily Hippoboscoidea, or among those that are inquilines in social insect colonies.

Diptera is a large order, containing an estimated 240,000 species of mosquitos, gnats, midges and others, although under half of these (about 120,000 species) have been described. It is one of the major insect orders both in terms of ecological and human (medical and economic) importance. The Diptera, in particular the mosquitoes (Culicidae), are of great importance as disease transmitters, acting as vectors for malaria, dengue, West Nile virus, yellow fever, encephalitis and other infectious diseases.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA