Pest Control Database - House Fly

Contact Attack Pest Control to control your house fly pest problem.

Common House Fly (Musca Domestica)

Common House Flies are ubiquitous insects, with a flight range of at least 8 kilometres (5 miles). They are highly active indoors. In colder climates breeding generally ceases before winter, whereupon the insects over winter either as pupae or adults. However, in warm environments houseflies remain active and reproduce throughout the year.

Lesser House Fly (Fannia Canicularis)

Lesser House Flies are frequently encountered in poultry houses. They have an erratic flight pattern and are often seen flying in large numbers around indoor light fittings. The Lesser House Fly is more tolerant of cool conditions than the Common House Fly. This species survives the winter mainly in the form of pupae, although, as with the Common House Fly, adults remain active and reproduce throughout the year in warm conditions.

See also Cluster Flies.

Significance

House Flies can transmit intestinal worms, or their eggs, and are potential vectors of diseases such as dysentery, gastroenteritis, typhoid, cholera and tuberculosis. They will frequently and feed indiscriminately on any liquefiable solid food, which may equally be moist, putrefying material or food stored for human consumption.

House Flies liquefy food by regurgitating digestive juices and their stomach contents on to the food substance. This 'liquid' is then drawn up by the suctorial mouthparts and in so doing the insects pick up pathogenic organisms, which may collect on their bodies to be transferred on contact with other surfaces or survive passage through the gut to be deposited as fly spots.

Fly spotting, produced when the House Fly feeds or defecates, results in rejection of contaminated farm produce, for example eggs, at point of sale. Furthermore, House Flies are frequently the subject of complaints to environmental health authorities, causing major problems where infestations over-spill from breeding sites such as rubbish tips and animal houses.

The Lesser House Fly makes longer flights than the Common House Fly and spends less time resting. Females of the species tend to remain near the breeding sites and only the males migrate. For these reasons the Lesser House Fly is less prone to transmit disease than the Common House Fly, but large populations and similar feeding habits mean that this insect, too, has a considerable potential to act as a vector of disease. It has occasionally been implicated as a vector of intestinal or urinary myiasis.

Contact Attack Pest Control to control your house fly pest problem.

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