Does Diptera Mimic Hymenoptera or Vice Versa

OK. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you don’t like the constant pestering or getting picked on that is a perpetual condition of life as we know it. So your ancestors may have evolved a strategy or morphology for mitigating all that aggravation and passed those traits to you, their wretched offspring.

One good strategy, in theory, is the inheritance of a tough looking morphology. The theory is, if you look tough, you are more likely to get left alone, as opposed to if you look like a sissy. Yet what is more sissy looking than a butterfly. Those mariposa maricones look sissy all righty. However, most all the insects leave butterflies alone because those butterflies are wing batters. That’s right. A little bee fixing to push a butterfly off the flower gets wing batted. It probably doesn’t hurt much to get wing batted on your dopey noggin or antennae. But I bet it is unbelievably annoying. Unbelievably!

A fly that mimics a wasp or bee, to look tough, will still get wing batted by a butterfly. No advantage from looking tough there. So why do so many dipterans look like hymenopterans or vice versa? Easy that, those flies have a reputation for nastiness. And nobody likes to be around the truly nasty. Whoa! The truly nasty are well, truly nasty. They produce unpleasant fumes, they chew with their mouths open, they drool, they seldom zip up, they have dandruff. Mercy! I could go on and on.

Anyway, maybe hymenopterans mimic dipterans.

That’s right dude. I look just like a fly. So I know what you’re thinking. Am I a real nasty fly or just a wasp? Well, go ahead punk. Make my day. Cause I am fixing to chunky spew all over your sorry ass.