Conicera tibialis
Species of fly
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Conicera tibialis, commonly known as the coffin fly, is a phorid fly in the genus Conicera known for its occurrence on buried human cadavers. Adult female coffin flies can burrow up to 2 meters (6.6 ft) into soil and enter coffins in order to lay eggs on or near the resting corpse. Maggots feed on the flesh of the corpse after hatching, with a preference for lean muscular tissue. Coffin flies sometimes do not surface at all—multiple consecutive generations of coffin flies can cycle completely, entirely underground.[2] Coffin flies have been found on corpses years after death, and in 2011 an exhumed coffin in central Spain revealed a large number of coffin flies inhabiting the coffin and feeding on the cadaver 18 years after death—far beyond the 3–5 year postmortem intervals previously recorded.[3]
| Conicera tibialis | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Diptera |
| Family: | Phoridae |
| Genus: | Conicera |
| Species: | C. tibialis |
| Binomial name | |
| Conicera tibialis | |