Allopiophila tomentosa
Taxonomy
This page represents the following TreeOfLife-200M taxonomic path.[1]
- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Class: Insecta
- Order: Diptera
- Family: Piophilidae
- Genus: Allopiophila
- Species: Allopiophila tomentosa
Visual Description
Allopiophila tomentosa is a small species of Piophilidae, measuring approximately 2.5 mm in body length.[2] Morphological observations of museum specimens in the TreeOfLife-200M dataset reveal a black thorax and abdomen covered in a dull grey tomentum.[1],[2] The head is black, with yellow coloration present on the gena and anterior frons.[2] The femora are black, and the fore tarsi are cylindrical.[2]
Natural History
Allopiophila tomentosa (also known by the synonym Boreopiophila tomentosa) is a subarctic species found in northern Canada, Alaska, Finland, and Russia.[2],[3]
The species has been observed to form male-biased aggregations on discarded moose (Alces alces) antlers, where mating occurs.[2] These aggregations appear to be territorial, with the flies concentrating on damaged areas of the antler matrix.[2] This behavior suggests that A. tomentosa may use antlers as a larval substrate, a finding that challenges previous assumptions that the genus develops exclusively in fungi.[2]
Gallery
References
- 1 2 Dataset view for Animalia / Arthropoda / Insecta / Diptera / Piophilidae / Allopiophila / tomentosa constructed from imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M records under this taxonomic path. Hugging Face Datasets. https://huggingface.co/datasets/imageomics/TreeOfLife-200M.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Christopher Angell; Megan Reich. Aggregation of Boreopiophila tomentosa (Diptera: Piophilidae) on discarded moose antlers. The Journal of the Entomological Society of Ontario. 2026. https://doi.org/10.21083/jeso.v157.9030.
- ↑ Allopiophila tomentosa (Frey, 1930). GBIF. https://www.gbif.org/species/1522363. Accessed 2026-07-16.