34 Maine: agricultural e^xplrimlnt station. 1910. 



Trichocera regelationis. 



In Insect Notes for 1907 (Bulletin No. 148, Me. Agric. Expt. 

 Station, p. 278) mention \yas made of the occurrence of this 

 species breeding in potatoes ; the slender maggots having been 

 found in a lot of potatoes that froze the preceding fall and were 

 soft and rotting the following May. Whether this species would 

 develop in sound potatoes was not ascertained. In a letter dated 

 May 6, 1907, from a correspondent in Patten, we read: "... 

 This maggot goes only under the skin ; not doing much damage 

 to the tuber. . . . Sometimes they will eat turnips, especially 

 sweet ones, so that it spoils them. Carrots, parsnips, onions, 

 and in fact everything that has a tender root." From the con- 

 text of the remaining portion of the letter it is evident that our 

 correspondent has confused the maggots of several species of 

 flies, among them Sciara, Pegomyia, and perhaps others. For 

 this reason a brief description of the maggot will be given here 

 with the hope that the reader may keep a lookout for similar 

 larvae and submit them to the Experiment Station for identifi- 

 cation. This species has also been recorded as being injurious 

 to apples. 



The maggot is a slender, legless, whitish creature, over ^ 

 of an inch in length when full grown. Its head is brown, 

 narrower than the first body segment, but quite distinct wholly 

 exserted, and apparently not retractile, differing in this respect 

 from the majority of crane fly larvae. The body segments, 12 

 in number, are very indistinctly marked, the transverse folds 

 on each segment being nearly as distinct as the sutures them- 

 selves. The surface of the body is rather thickly covered with 

 fine pale hairs more or less erect and mingled with these are 

 some small bristles not markedly differentiated from the hairs. 

 The mouth parts resemble somewhat those of Rhyphus. The 

 labrum, epipharynx, mandible, hypopharynx, maxilla and labium, 

 are as shown in the figures (figs. 52-55). The lateral comb of 

 the epipharynx (ep. c. fig. 53) has blunt, rounded teeth. On 

 the ventral side of the last segment is the anal plate (fig. 51) 

 perforated by a transverse slit at the center. The anterior 

 spiracles or breathing organs are small, rounded openings situ- 

 ated on the dorsal surface of the first thoracic segment; the 



