Dec 16, 2020
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#1133 - Fam. Milichiidae - Jackalflies
The thing that got me so excited over Rosie Benz’s photo at BowerBird wasn’t the rather plump assassin bug and the honeybee it had caught. It was the tiny dark flies crawling all over the body, feasting on the dissolving body of the bee.
Jackal-flies, also known as freeloader flies, are swift arrivals whenever a large spider or predatory bug has caught an insect, and feast on the leaking bodyfluids. Generally, the spider or bug doesn’t seem to mind - indeed, one behaviour described at Wikipedia states "Another activity observed in some species of Michiliidae shows them to be serving a function analogous to that of cleaner wrasse and cleaner shrimp; they literally scavenge around the chelicerae and anal openings of large spiders, such as species of Araneus and Nephila, that cooperatively spread their wet and sticky chelicerae thus allowing the flies to feed actively all over the bases, fangs and mouth."
Milichiids breed in decaying vegetable matter, manure, and human ordure, which earns them another common name - filth flies.
Sunshine Coast, QLD