Yellow Soldier Flies

Subject:  long-bodied yellow-orange fly
Geographic location of the bug:  Buffalo NY, USA
Date: 06/27/2021
Time: 04:34 PM EDT
Your letter to the bugman:  Hi. I’ve never seen anything like these before. Dozens of them hovering over a patch of leaf litter with white fungus in a heavily shaded corner of our yard. They move around constantly and were not seen to land. Body length about 2.5cm.
How you want your letter signed:  JR

Yellow Soldier Fly

Dear JR,
These yellow flies reminded Daniel of some flies he saw in Ohio several times in June that he believed were Soldier Flies in the family Stratiomyidae, and a web search led to Red Worm Composting and an article entitled Yellow Soldier Flies Revisited where it states:  “As if this wasn’t cool enough, today when I walked by a bag of (compostable) used cat litter material – waiting to get added to my new litter vermicomposting system – I noticed a bunch of these large, yellow flies hovering around the bag.”  Eventually Dr. Stephen Marshal, at the University of Guelph identified them as probably Ptecticus trivittatus.  We located a matching image on BugGuide.

Yellow Soldier Fly

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