Rat-tailed maggots (Diptera: Syriphidae) as carrion feeders: mythology and reality

For over two thousand years, a superstitious formula for how to produce bees via spontaneous generation from carrion prevailed in Old World culture. A specially prepared dead ox that is partially buried in the ground will generate a swarm of bees in approximately 11 days. This process, known as begonia, was included in Greek and Roman literature and persisted into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with references in the Bible and the works of Shakespeare. Russian entomologist Baron Carl-Robert von Osten-Sacken published On the oxen born bees of the ancients (begonia) in 1893, which discusses why the idea of begonia endured for such a long time. Eristalinae (Syrphidae), convincing honeybee mimics, can colonize carrion in certain circumstances and upon emergence the adults would resemble bees. On 17 September 2009 a buried cadaver was partially exhumed and left in a recessed gravesite in the pineywoods ecoregion of Texas. This grave partially filled with rainwater and adult Syrphidae and rattailed maggots were observed. Additionally, Martins et al. (2010) reported that the syrphid fly, Ornidia obesa (Fabricius 1775), colonized pig carcasses in Brazil. Syrphidae, while not a common forensically significant insect, represents a historically noted association between insects and carrion.