Adults

Nutrition involves balance between feeding habits of larval and adult flies. Primary feeding occurs during the larval stage. Adult feeding serves to compensate the shortcomings of larval nourishment. At one extreme are nonbiting midges, with larvae that vigorously filter microorganisms from water. The adults do not feed. Related to nonbiting midges are biting midges, mosquitoes, and black flies. Adult females in these families must supplement an insufficient larval diet. Although one batch of eggs occasionally is laid without a meal of blood, blood is necessary to mature a second batch. Flies that lay one batch of eggs without blood are autogenous; those that cannot lay at all without blood are anautogenous. One species can have both types, possibly as a result of shifting populations or races arising from natural selection. For example, in the far north, large populations of biting flies (e.g., mosquitoes, biting midges, black flies, horse flies) occur during the short Arctic summer, and obviously there are insufficient numbers of warm-blooded animals to provide food. If the flies find blood, they use it. If not, they still survive.

Most adult flies visit flowers, which provide water, nectar, and pollen. Pollen, more difficult for a sucking insect to obtain than blood, is rich in protein and is an important source of this nutrient. Certain hover flies crush pollen grains between hardened portions of the labella before swallowing them; many flies actively probe into flowers, covering their heads and eyes with pollen grains. Nectar from flowers contains carbohydrates, and most adult flies use this syrupy liquid.

Although their role in pollination is less well known than that of bees, flies are important pollinators of flowers. Some plants (e.g., spurges) are often covered with small flies of different families. Small flies also feed on honeydew from aphids. Although the name Drosophila means “lover of dew,” this insect sucks water and any other obtainable fluid. Flies feed on dung and liquid products of either animal or vegetable decay. They obtain nutrients from farmyard manure heaps and garbage dumps. These places also harbour many larvae that feed either directly on available organic food or are carnivorous on other larvae. A familiar example is the yellow dung fly; adults prey on other insects visiting the dung.

Larvae

The adaptability of flies is evident in the wide range of foods that larvae eat. Apart from parasites, the most specialized feeders are larvae that live in plant tissues (e.g., leafmining Agromyzidae, many restricted to one plant species or group). Generally agricultural and horticultural pests (e.g., cabbage root fly) are versatile species, feeding on a variety of wild hosts and modifying their diets when presented with concentrated plantings of commercial crops. Many carnivorous fly larvae (e.g., asilids) probably live in soil and eat vegetable or animal matter, whichever is available. Since adult asilids (robber flies), however, feed on other insects, the larval nourishment is presumed to be inadequate. Some larvae, particularly maggots, that feed on vegetable matter during the first and second instars, become carnivorous during the third instar, when most of the growth takes place.

Larval respiration is adapted to the medium in which the larvae live. Although a few parasitic larvae (e.g., Pipunculidae, parasitic in froghoppers, and Drosophilidae, internal parasites of scale insects) get oxygen through the skin, most dipterous larvae need a tracheal system to distribute oxygen. Primitively, the tracheal system probably opened exteriorly by paired spiracles on each segment of the body. The soil dwellers, Bibionidae and Scatopsidae, retain this system, although most families have kept spiracles only on the thorax (one pair) and one at the tip of the abdomen. Even these are closed in some aquatic larvae (e.g., luminous larvae of some fungus gnats and larvae of biting midges). However, mosquito larvae and those of most other water-living flies surface frequently to renew their oxygen supplies. Some larvae pierce the stems of underwater plants to obtain oxygen formed as a result of photosynthesis. Maggots of Cyclorrhapha rely heavily on complex posterior spiracles. Pupae respire through prothoracic spiracles that are sometimes equipped with long tubes extending outside the cocoon or puparium.