#3799 · 🪰 flies & mosquitoes
Locust Blowfly
🇳🇱 Sprinkhaanvlieg ·Stomorhina lunata
9 photos from iNaturalist (Creative Commons) · credits & licences
- 1. © Michael Knapp · CC BY 4.0
- 2. © Sylvain Montagner · CC BY 4.0
- 3. © Michael Knapp · CC BY 4.0
- 4. © Valentin Hamon · CC BY-NC 4.0
- 5. © Marcello Consolo · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- 6. © Víctor Javier Marugán. · CC BY-NC 4.0
- 7. © Marcello Consolo · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- 8. © Marcello Consolo · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- 9. © Marcello Consolo · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
what is it?
Stomorhina lunata is a species of fly in the family Calliphoridae, often misidentified because of the unusual band pattern in the abdomen, typical of hoverflies. S. lunata is an important egg predator of some major African agricultural pests, the South African Brown locust ( Locustana pardalina ), the more widespread Desert locust ( Schistocerca gregaria ), and the migratory locust ( Locustana migratoria ).
base stats
Bars compare against all animals on log scales: up to 300,000 Dutch and 600,000 worldwide sightings (the most-seen species), 150 t (blue whale), 30 m and 400 years (Greenland shark).
fun facts
- Spotted 148 times in the Netherlands on iNaturalist: the #49 most seen of the flies & mosquitoes in NL.
- 6,906 observations worldwide on iNaturalist.
- Scientifically named by Johan Christian Fabricius in 1805 (221 years ago).
fact sheet
- English
- Locust Blowfly
- Nederlands
- Sprinkhaanvlieg
- scientific name
- Stomorhina lunata
- class
- Insecta
- order
- Diptera
- family
- Calliphoridae
- sightings in NL
- 148
- sightings in Europe
- 4,501
- sightings worldwide
- 6,906
- GBIF records in NL
- 7,792
- weight
- —
- length
- —
- lifespan
- —
- named
- 1805 by Johan Christian Fabricius
relatives· Calliphoridae
Sources: iNaturalist taxon 326655, Wikidata Q14622055, GBIF 1567939, Wikipedia (EN), Wikipedia (NL). Intro text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-24.