Invertebrates Codexery

Botfly

Flies whose larvae are internal parasites of mammals.

Last updated

A botfly is any fly in the family Oestridae, also written as bot fly, bott fly or bot-fly.[1] The word "bot" in this sense means a maggot, and a warble is a skin lump caused by a warble fly maggot under the skin.[2]

Scientific classification

  1. KingdomAnimalia
  2. PhylumArthropoda
  3. CladePancrustacea
  4. ClassInsecta
  5. OrderDiptera
  6. FamilyOestridae

Named by Leach, 1815

Sources: Wikipedia taxobox: Botfly (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Quick Facts

Family
Oestridae
Adult lifespan
8–9 days
Parasitism type
Obligate internal parasites of mammals
Human parasite
Dermatobia hominis

Facts from the source article.

Key facts and history

Botflies deposit eggs on a host or use an intermediate vector such as a housefly, mosquito, or tick.[3] Larvae drop onto a large mammal host, stimulated by warmth and proximity, and burrow under the skin.[3] Equine botflies lay eggs on horses' front legs, knees, throat, or nose, and these eggs look like small yellow drops of paint.[4] In cattle, lesions from botflies can become infected by Mannheimia granulomatis, causing lechiguana, and without antibiotics the animal dies within 3–11 months.[5]

Using her legs, the female botfly grasps the wings of a phoretic insect after mating.[3] Over her brief adult lifespan of only 8–9 days, the fertilized female repeats this process to distribute the 100 to 400 eggs she produces.[3] Eggs move to the mouth when a horse rubs its nose on its legs, then travel to the intestines, where larvae attach to the stomach lining or small intestine.[4] Larvae stay attached for 10–12 months, then are expelled in feces; adult botflies emerge from them within one to two months.[4]

What the cited sources add

The BBC synopsis for "Life In The Undergrowth: Intimate Relations" describes that silk is used by some communal spiders to create silken palaces rising 15 to 20 metres up in the forest canopy.[6] The same BBC synopsis notes that just over 400 million years ago, creatures left the sea to move onto land.[6]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Botfly" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Inc. Merriam-Webster, "Webster's American English dictionary", Federal Street Press, 2011; "Medical and veterinary entomology", Academic, 2009; Journal of the Department of Agriculture of Western Australia, Volume 9, Pub: Western Australia. Dept. of Agriculture, 1904, p 17; Brown, Lesley, "The New shorter Oxford English dictionary on historical principles", Clarendon, 1993 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Botfly" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Brown, Lesley, "The New shorter Oxford English dictionary on historical principles", Clarendon, 1993 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Botfly" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Life In The Undergrowth: Intimate Relations (Programme synopses)", BBC, 2005-10-20; Drees, "Field Guide to Texas Insects", Gulf Publishing Company, 1999 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Botfly" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ondrak, "Ask The Vet: Treating Bot Infestations In Horses", lambriarvet.com (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Botfly" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Piper, "Extraordinary Animals: An Encyclopedia of Curious and Unusual Animals", Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, p. 192–194; Riet-Correa, "Lechiguana (focal proliferative fibrogranulomatous panniculitis) in cattle", Veterinary Research Communications, December 2000, p. 557–572 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  6. "Life In The Undergrowth: Intimate Relations (Programme synopses)", BBC, 2005-10-20. facts only, no text reused. bbc.co.uk

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Botfly (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

Related entries

Named in this entry

Parasitism

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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