At first glance, the insect visiting this
Chrysanthemum flower looks just like a honeybee - but on closer inspection you can see the insect has a lot of the characteristics you'd expect to see on a fly: a single pair of wings, short antenna, and sucking mouth parts. This insect is in fact a hoverfly! Also known as a flower fly or a syrphid fly, this European species of hoverfly (
Eristalis arbustorum) is incapable of stinging, but is definitely converging on the morphology (shape, color, etc.) of a honeybee. This form of mimicry is also known as Batesian mimicry - when a non-toxic palatable species looks like a toxic non-palatable species. What is even more amazing is that the hoverfly, honeybee, and
Chrysanthemum are all exotic (or non-native) species here in the central valley of California! Here's a cool paper by
Pfenning et al. 2001.
