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Owlfly Ascalaphidae female 3 by kadavoor
2010-04-03
- Classification
- Photograph
- Museum
- Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- CC BY-SA 4.0, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Kids profiles and older: it shows nature, places, still life or a children's book. How works are placed
About this work
Owlflies are dragonfly-like insects with large bulging eyes and long knobbed antennae. They are neuropterans in the family Ascalaphidae; they are only distantly related to the true flies, and even more distant from the dragonflies and damselflies. They are diurnal or crepuscular predators of other flying insects, and are typically 5 cm (2.0 in) long.
The Ascalaphinae are the namesake subfamily of the owlfly family (Ascalaphidae), winged insects of the order Neuroptera. Most are found in the tropics. Their characteristic apomorphy is the ridge which divides each of their huge compound eyes; they are thus known as split-eyed owlflies.
According to D. E. Kimmins, "In the Asiatic species there may be specialized tufts of hairs on the prothorax, the prescutum and the supra-episternum, and in addition there may be a small triangular lobe on each side of the mesoscutum. The angle formed by the anal lobe of the fore wing has also been found of service in associating males and females. These specialized hairs on the thorax are also found in some of the African species of Helicomitus, and in other species, tufts of similar hairs occur on the costal margin of the fore wing at the base,…
