Giant Blue Robber Fly - Blepharotes spendidissimus
Family Asilidae
This page contains pictures and information about Giant Blue Robber Flies
that we found
in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Body length 35mm
- The Giant Blue Robber Fly has the relatively small head, legs are not long but with board abdomen. The body and legs is covered with short grey hairs. Whole body, includes eyes, abdomen and legs are in dark steel blue colour. Pair of Wings are tinted in steel blue as well.
- On mid-summer Dec 2008 in Daisy Hill near Buhot Creek, we were lucky enough to take some photos of this Giant Blue Robber Fly. The robber fly just flied pass in front of us, rested on a stem and started cleaning its face and front legs. It flied away after a few seconds.
- The Giant Blue Robber Fly is dark steel blue in colour. It is very large although is not the
largest fly that we found. When it took off, it required some effort, similar to a
helicopter, flies up vertically before heading off to its desired direction. It flied with loud buzzing sound.
Tillyard (reference) suggested that both this Giant Blue Robber Fly and the Giant Yellow Robber Fly "occur somewhere rarely in Eastern Australia". We found the Giant Yellow Robber Fly a few time but this Giant Blue only once. It is always exciting to see a large beautiful insect.
In the Karawatha forest and Daisy Hill, we saw quite a number of times that a large steel blue insect fly buzzing pass in front of us. It could be the blue wasp or this robber fly. They never stopped and we're never sure what they were.
- Reference:
- 1. Insects of Australia, CSIRO, Division of Entomology, Melbourne University Press, 2nd Edition 1991, p 758.
- 2. Insects of Australia and New Zealand - R. J. Tillyard, Angus & Robertson, Ltd, Sydney, 1926, p363.
- 3. A revision of Neoaratus Ricardo, with the description of six allied new genera from the Australian region (Diptera : Asilidae : Asilini) - G Daniels, 1987.
- 4. Asilini - Australian Asilidae - Dr. Robert Lavigne, Honorary Research Associate, South Australian Museum, Adelaide, SA.
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[ Up ] [ Giant Yellow Robber Fly ] [ Giant Blue Robber Fly ] - 1. Insects of Australia, CSIRO, Division of Entomology, Melbourne University Press, 2nd Edition 1991, p 758.
