Among my favorites in the insect world are the pollinators. Even though bees have probably gotten the most attention as pollinators, there are hundreds of other types of insects, birds, and even some mammals that contribute significantly to the vital process of pollination. Many of them are quite pretty (i.e. butterflies, hummingbirds, etc), but some of them aren’t really. One of the not so pretty, but really interesting ones, are the bristle flies. There are hundreds types of bristle flies that provide pollination services all over the world with the exception of the polar regions.

Here in central Florida, the bristle fly that we have is called Juriniopsis adusta. Even though it’s quite common, it has no common name except bristle fly. They can be found around here from early spring until late fall, and pollenate quite a variety of wildflowers as well as many crop plants. This one was one of many pollinators that were hungrily working on the flowers in a field that I wandered into over the fall. It was fantastic seeing so many different pollinators in one area and I went back several times over the next couple of weeks to capture as many as possible of them on film. Even though the bristle flies were not the prettiest ones there, they did make up a significant amount of the population, just showing how important they really are.