The primary screwworm fly Cochliomyia hominivorax (Coquerel) (Diptera: Calliphoridae) is one of the most important insect pests of livestock in neotropical regions, whereas Cochliomyia macellaria (Fabricius) (Diptera: Calliphoridae), the secondary screwworm, is of medical and sanitary importance because of its role in the dissemination of pathogens. These two species share morphological similar...

Communities of adult sarcosaprophagous dipterans were evaluated using both Schoenly traps (BST) baited with rabbit carcasses and the traditional forensic methodology (TradC) in the Sabana de Bogotà, Colombia. During 42 sampling days, 2,726 adult dipterans were collected (2,291 by BST and 435 by TradC) belonging to 31 morphospecies (31 by BST and 23 by TradC) and 14 families (14 by BST and 10 by...

This paper concerns with a class of delayed Nicholson’s blowflies model with a nonlinear density-dependent mortality term. Under appropriate conditions, we establish some criteria to ensure that the solutions of this model converge globally exponentially to a positive almost periodic solution. Moreover, we give some examples and numerical simulations to illustrate our main results.

Neurons in the visual system of the blowfly have large receptive fields that are selective for specific optic flow fields. Here, we studied the neural mechanisms underlying flow-field selectivity in proximal Vertical System (VS)-cells, a particular subset of tangential cells in the fly. These cells have local preferred directions that are distributed such as to match the flow field occurring du...

An important goal in forensic entomology is the identification of necrophagous fly species that breed directly on carcasses. In kingdom of Saudi Arabia there are rarely studies on carrion breeding blowflies. Using rabbit carcasses as a model for study, a key for the identification of three species of blowflies (Diptera: Calliphoridae) collected from deferent habitat (desert, urban, agriculture ...

The position and orientation of the thorax and head of flying blowflies (Calliphora vicina) were measured using small sensor coils mounted on the thorax and head. During flight, roll movements of the thorax are compensated by counter rolls of the head relative to the thorax. The yaw turns of the thorax (thorax saccades) are accompanied by faster saccades of the head, starting later and finishin...

The chasing behavior of male blowflies after small targets belongs to the most rapid and virtuosic visually guided behaviors found in nature. Since in a structured environment any turn towards a target inevitably leads to a displacement of the entire retinal image in the opposite direction, it might evoke optomotor following responses counteracting the turn. To analyze potential interactions be...

For many animals, including humans, the optic flow generated on the eyes during locomotion is an important source of information about self-motion and the structure of the environment. The blowfly has been used frequently as a model system for experimental analysis of optic flow processing at the microcircuit level. Here, we describe a model of the computational mechanisms implemented by these ...