Cochliomyia macellaria

Cochliomyia macellaria, also known as the secondary screwworm, is a species of blow fly in the family Calliphoridae. These screwworms are referred to as "secondary" because they typically infest wounds after invasion by primary myiasis-causing flies. While blow flies may be found in every terrestrial habitat, C. macellaria is primarily found in the United States, American tropics, and sometimes southern Canada. They are most common in the southeastern United States in states like Florida. C. macellaria have a metallic greenish-blue thorax and a red-orange head and eyes. These adult blowflies range from 5–8 mm in size.

Cochliomyia macellaria

xpda · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
secondary screwwormPBDB
Sits inside
CochliomyiaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta

Time the record covers

At least 2 thousand years on record.

The record covers at least 14 ka to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 210 ka to 0 Mya.

Pleistocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 1 of 2 occurrences213 ka–189 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences189 ka–166 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences166 ka–142 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences142 ka–118 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences118 ka–95 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences95 ka–71 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences71 ka–47 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences47 ka–24 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences24 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence14 ka – 11.7 ka710 ka0 Mya

2 occurrences of Cochliomyia macellaria on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

2 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Cochliomyia macellaria and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Cochliomyia macellaria and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

13 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Cochliomyia macellaria, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

2 references

Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Cochliomyia macellaria

Credit
xpda
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Cochliomyia macellaria was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itCochliomyia through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Fabricius 1775)