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Photo#8277
Syrphid larva

Syrphid larva
Gainesville, Florida, USA
October 8, 2004
This jelly-like syrphid larva (top) is a predator of aphids that I have seen often on milkweed, feeding on oleander aphid as above. I raised to an adult once, and have a not-great picture that I will also post.

Note: per Beatriz's comment below, I have unlinked the following images which are not of the same individual:

Not an expert but
it's very similar to this Ocyptamus fuscipennis larva.


duplicate comment

Possibly Ocyptamus fuscipennis
I've reared out larvae that look just like yours (e.g., bulge in the middle, a dark mass inside, and a white band across the bulge and extending backward), and like yours, they were feeding on oleander aphids on milkweed. They turned out to be O. fuscipennis, for what it's worth. Unfortunately, I don't have a larva-to-adult photo series of the same individual.

Moved
Moved from Syrphinae.

Moved
Moved from Pseudodoros clavatus.
We can't be certain of the genus yet.

Something else?
It doesn't look like other larvae of Pseudodoros. In fact it looks closer to Syrphus. May be it should be moved to tribe or subfamily. Perhaps the same applies to the pupa.
The only way to be sure is to raise them.

 
The adult is one I raised from the pupa
but looking at the dates, it seem like the larva is not the one I raised it from, just a similar-looking one. This was back before we even had the linking feature so I linked them using thumbnails. The pupa and the adult definitely belong together so I'll link them, but I'll separate the larva - I'm sure I thought at the time it was the same species, but it was a long time ago and I was even less of an expert then! (I am puzzled, though, by how different this larva is from the other identified as Pseudodoros - seems like even an amateur would not confuse the two, and I am pretty confident when I posted it I thought this belonged with the adult image). Where do you think I should move it?

Here's a link to the adult, for reference:


Nice series, Hannah
I wasn't aware of this bit of natural history. I'll be looking for these. I spent some time carefully scanning aphid clusters this year looking for predators in their midst, but never spotted any (though I'm sure they were there).