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What is this insect? Is it bad to have in your house? - Exaireta spinigera

What is this insect? Is it bad to have in your house? - Exaireta spinigera
Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Size: roughly 1/2"
Found a few of these insects in our townhouse near the base of Burnaby Mountain, in Burnaby, BC, Canada. I was terrified that they are termites or carpenter ants but the more looking I am doing the more likely these look like a type of fly. I don't have a good photo of their wings outstretched unfortunately, my husband killed the last batch before I could get to it. We usually see 2 or 3 at a time and they have been coming and going for the last couple of months. We find them near the top of walls in our stairway between the ground floor and the second flood. They are not anywhere near a door or window. We do have an indoor worm composter but I haven't seen any bugs come out of that. The husband found a little hole between the wall and the stairs yesterday where he thinks they are coming out of. We share our house with a cat, no other pets. Any help in identifying this and dealing with it (do we need an exterminator, do they cause damage etc) would be most appreciated. Sorry the photo isn't better. I will try and get a better one next time we see one.

Moved
Moved from ID Request.

Stratiomyidae: Exaireta spinigera
Stratiomyidae: Exaireta spinigera...This species was introduced from Australia or New Zealand. It is not a pest; larvae are general scavengers in things like compost, so it seems likely that that some are in your indoor composter

 
Thank you
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. My husband has now told me that he say a number of these bugs outside over the summer when he was painting the deck, so it's likely that they got introduced to our home and found our composter that way. Our condo development did not have composting so we got a worm composter to keep organic matter from going into the garbage but it's just been announced that we'll be getting city composting services in the new year so that will mean we don't need the worms anymore, which will mean there shouldn't be anything else overly attractive to them.

Given your location, I wonder...
...if it could be Exaireta spinigera?



If that's right (wait for expert confirmation/correction), it's an import from Australia, and is not considered a pest (see the Info Page).

Welcome to BugGuide!

 
Thank you
Appreciate the answer and it looks like you were right!

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