The unusual operation is a critical part of a strategy to combat the spread of the flesh-eating screwworm fly, a pest that poses a serious threat to the beef industry, wildlife, and even household ...

Mosquitoes and crane flies are often confused for one another because they look similar at first glance, and they live in ...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced plans to drop millions of flies over Texas and Mexico, in an effort to ...

The U.S. government is preparing to breed billions of flies and drop them from airplanes over Mexico and even southern Texas.

During this time as larvae, crane flies are important for recycling and decomposition — they eat leaves, plants and small bits of organic material in the soil or water bodies where they live.

Their menu includes, Leatherjackets (crane fly larvae), Chafer grubs and Weevils, caterpillars, fly larvae, thrips and other turf-damaging insects. Once introduced to the soil, nematodes actively seek ...

"Lawn grubs, for example, might be the larvae of Japanese beetles, June bugs, Southern masked chafer, or Crane fly larvae," Harlow-Ellis says. Lawn grubs are white and C-shaped, about 1/2-inch long.

A crane fly lands on an Owl's Clover (Orthocarpus densiflorus), April 25, 2023 at Carrizo Plain National Monument during the "Superbloom" wildflower explosion, near Santa Margarita, California.

Whether you call them crane flies or "skeeter" hawks, the spindly-legged flying insect is an annoyance to humans and a plaything for pets every spring. Crane flies begin to emerge from grassy areas ...

Fragile and fluttering, crane flies are also surprisingly ephemeral. "These dipterans live a short adult life of one to two weeks with the sole goal of mating and laying eggs," Brandi Keller, a ...