This is Scientific American 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Entagliata.

When you think of pollinators, what comes to mind? Bees, butterflies, maybe hummingbirds?

Well how about flies?

Flies in general are the second most important group of pollinating insects. So I think

that they deserve more credit than they often get.

The Scott Claim is an insect ecologist at the University of Georgia and he's been studying

a type of fly known as a hover fly. You may have actually seen them before, masquerading

as bees and wasps.

They tend to be yellow and black colored and they're kind of different from other flies

in that regard. They're these little insects that you're often find visiting flowers

or sometimes they'll actually land on your skin seeking the salt on your skin.

By studying isotopes in the insects, legs and wings, clemenous colleagues have now determined

that some of these flies make a remarkable autumn migration. They seem to originate near

Ontario, Canada and then they fly hundreds of miles south to Central Illinois and it's

possible that some go even further, thousands of miles perhaps.

They get up in high altitude air currents, they're able to just surf on these winds basically

and it takes them these vast distances.

The results appear in the journal Ecological Monographs.

As for why the flies migrate, well Claims says they might be pursuing the aphids they

eat southward or maybe they're following the blooms of nectar rich flowers.

And if they're moving, they could be moving these ecological services across the continent

on an annual basis.

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