"Lise" wrote in message
. ..
"mel turner" wrote in message
...
"Mike" wrote in message
news:LQxle.20116$wr.6533@clgrps12...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7984143/

aside from the discovery, what is that fly on the flower?

It's a syrphid fly or hover fly, family Syrphidae.
[snip]

I would have sworn it was a wasp... how can you tell it's not?

They look very different in detail.

In the photo you can clearly see that it has a fly's head, antennae
and mouthparts, all of which are clearly different from a wasp's.

Apart from beelike or wasplike coloration and sometimes behavior,
syrphid flies are rather typical flies in body structure and wings.
Again, the details are very different from those of wasps and bees.

If you had specimens in front of you instead of just a web page
news photo, you'd easily see that the fly has just two functional
wings instead of two pairs of wings as in wasps [the hind pair of
wings in true flies (order Diptera) are represented by small
appendages called halteres (not visible in the photo)], and a
flylike proboscis [visible in the photo] for mouthparts instead
of a wasplike set of biting jaws.

e.g.,
http://www.naturefg.com/pages/c-anim...0germanica.htm
http://www.naturepixel.com/guepe_ves...t24ex_a-89.htm
http://www.bugpeople.org/taxa/Hymeno...espulaPage.htm

vs.

http://www.stetson.edu/~pmay/bugs/syrphid%201.jpg
http://www.gartendatenbank.de/tiere/syrphidae/001.htm
http://bugguide.net/node/view/7903
http://www.sel.barc.usda.gov/selhome/gbu/toxomerus.html
http://highplainsipm.org/HpIPMImage/...sm/IMG0091.jpg
http://www.gardensafari.net/english/hoverflies.htm

http://dereila.ca/dereilaimages/bugs2.html
http://www.pbase.com/lejun/bees_and_flys

cheers