Vol. xxix] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 299 



Dohrniphora venusta Coquillett (Dipt.) in Sarracenia 



flava. 



By FRANK MORTON JONES, Wilmington, Delaware. 



(Plate XVII.) 



The abundant accumulated insect captures of our larger 

 North American pitcher-plants offer a store of animal food, 

 advantage of which is taken by quite a list of insects. Some 

 of these are apparently habitual and necessary associates of 

 the plants, while others, though they frequently avail them- 

 selves of this shelter and food-supply, have other habitual 

 feeding-places. In the late summer the pitchers of Sarracenia 

 flava no longer actively capture insects ; the accumulated insect 

 remains found in them at this season are more or less dry and 

 fragmentary, and probably no special equipment of habit or 

 structure is required by insects discovering this food-supply to 

 evade capture by the leaf-trap. Among several species present 

 in the pitchers at this time is the larva of a Phorid ; from two 

 or three to a dozen or more of these larvae may occupy a 

 single pitcher ; the puparia, too, are found among the insect 

 remains, and the emerging flies mate and oviposit in captivity, 

 so that a tumbler of dead grasshoppers is all the equipment 

 necessary to obtain them in all stages. Professor C. T. Brues 

 has kindly identified this fly as Dohrniphora venusia Coquillett, 

 a widely distributed species occurring in both North and South 

 America. Coquillett's description (Canadian Entomologist, 

 XXVII, p. 107, 1895), purporting to be that of the female, is 

 in reality that of the male (see Malloch, Proc. U. S. Nat. 

 Mus., XLIII, p. 432, 1912) ; di-raricata Aldrich has also been 

 referred to this species. In view of the apparent dearth of 

 knowledge of the life-histories of the Phoridae, the following 

 descriptions of the egg, larva, puparium, and of both sexes 

 of the imago as obtained from Sarracenia flara are here pre- 

 sented. 



H<7<7. Elongated ova!, not quite symmetrical : white, pearly, slightly 

 polished, minutely but not closely punctate, surface dry, non-adherent; 

 size, .27x.6.5 mm.; scattered singly by the? ; in this stage (at 70 deg. 

 Fahr.) three days. 



