A study of sheep blowflies at Limestone Downs sheep station in the northern Waikato, New Zealand, over two summers

Abstract

Abstract Sheep blowflies collected in a baited, wind‐orientated trap in the northern Waikato from August 1989 to May 1991 were predominantly the brown blowfly, Calliphora stygia (Fabricius), in the spring and the hairy maggot blowfly, Chrysomya rufifacies (Macquart), in the summer. The common green blowfly, Lucilia sericata (Meigen), and the Australian sheep blowfly, L. cuprina (Wiedemann), represented 15.1 and 2.4% of the total trap catch respectively in 1989/90 and 12.6 and 7.8% respectively in 1990/91. However, significantly more of the two Lucilia spp. and C. stygia were collected when the trap was lowered from 1.5 to 0.65m. In contrast, no L. cuprina was trapped in suburban Auckland in the 1990/91 summer. Of the total daily fly catch, 84% were collected from 1000 to 1500 h.