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Bird of Paradise Flies - Violet Phoenix
Callipappus sp. - Family Margarodidae
This page contains pictures and information about Bird of Paradise Flies - Violet Phoenix that we found in the Brisbane area, Queensland, Australia.
- Body length winged male 10mm, wingless female 40mm
- As a member in the Mealy Bugs family, Bird of Paradise Fly is unbelievable large, actually their female grow up to 40mm, the largest in Soft Bug suborder. Bird of Paradise Fly is an incredible insect. It has only one pair of wings so we first thought this could be a fly. After we saw their female and we were confused and cannot tell the order of this insect. By checking our reference book we found that they are the Bird of Paradise Flies, belong to the Mealy Bugs family.
- Last week (May 2003) we went for bush-walking in the conservation area near Alexander Hill in Brisbane, we found some insects which were very interesting. They were violet in colour. The males body length was 10mm with bright white hair at the abdomen tip. When they were flying, they just look like some cotton in the air. The males were flying around the gum trees. On the gum tree there were the large wingless females, 30-40mm body length, also in violet colour. The females were either hiding under the bark or climbing up on the tree trunk. There were males trying to mate with them.
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The male has a small head and two black eyes, antenna are about the same length as it body. The male has only one pair of wings. We cannot see any sign of the second pair of wings. The wing veins are simple. They do not put down their wings when rest. We cannot see their mouth parts. - The female is much larger than the male and is wingless. She has the flat and fat body. We cannot see her eyes. She has the antenna about the same length as the male. She has three pairs of strong legs for climbing up the gum tree trunk. We believe they are going to lay eggs on the tree top.
- We brought some of them home to see if there are any further development. We put them inside a wooden box with one glass windows. We found that the males dead soon after mating. The females climbed to the root of the box. Then on the wood surface they lay a white powder waxy substance of about the area of 10mm X 40mm. Each female take 3 to 4 days to do that and dead. The females' body reduced from 40mm to 10mm after laying those substance.
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About four weeks later, we found some small fellows came out from those white substance. There were hundreds of them, less than 1mm in length, oval in shape. They looked like tiny aphids. As their parents, they were violet in colour, crawling slowly on the wood surface. We did not know how to feed them so we put them back to the bush.
- After visiting this web page, Margaret Owen in Western Australia sent us emails and photos, telling us that there is the similar interesting insect in Western Australia. Details please visit the Silver Phoenix page.
- Margaret shown us that the Silver Phoenix has eggs developed in female's body. However, we found that the Violet Phoenix lays eggs and eggs develop externally. We think that actually it is not too difficult to relate the different 'incubation' process between the Violet Phoenix and the Silver Phoenix. Initially, very long time ago, all species of Bird of Paradise flies lay eggs and young hatched like the Violet Phoenix. Female found a suitable place, such as under bark, to lay her eggs. Later some species evolved so that female did not have enough time to lay their eggs but the eggs develop inside their body. It was an advantage for those species since the female will die anyway, and this give the eggs more protection.
