{{Taxobox
| color = pink
| name = ''Ormia ochracea''
| regnum =
Animalia
| phylum =
Arthropoda
| classis =
Insecta
| ordo =
Diptera
| familia =
Tachinidae
| genus = ''
Ormia''
| species = ''
O. ochracea''
| binomial = ''Ormia ochracea''
| binomial_authority = (
Bigot, 1889)
}}
''
Ormia ochracea'' is a small yellow
fly, a
parasite of
crickets. It is notable because of its exceptionally good hearing. The female is attracted by the song of the male cricket and deposits her young on him, as was discovered in
1970 by the zoologist
William H. Cade. The fly is found throughout the south in the
US, and has even been found as far north as
Hamilton, Ontario.
The mating call of the male field cricket (''
Gryllus texensis'') is used by ''Ormia ochracea'' in locating the cricket. The female pregnant flies are predators looking for a host. They machine gun their
larvae on the cricket as they fly overhead. The larvae quickly burrow into their host and eat the cricket in about four days.
''Ormia ochracea'' has become a
model organism in
sound localization experiments because of its unique
ear. The animal is too small for the time difference of sound arriving at the two ears to be calculated in the usual way, yet it can determine the direction of sound sources with exquisite precision. The
tympanic membranes of opposite ears are directly connected mechanically, allowing resolution of nanosecond time differences
[Miles RN, Robert D, Hoy RR. Mechanically coupled ears for directional hearing in the parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea. ''J Acoust Soc Am.'' 1995 Dec;98(6):3059-70. PMID 8550933 ][Robert D, Miles RN, Hoy RR. Directional hearing by mechanical coupling in the parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea. ''J Comp Physiol A''. 1996;179(1):29-44. PMID 8965258 ] and requiring a new neural coding strategy.
[Mason AC, Oshinsky ML, Hoy RR. Hyperacute directional hearing in a microscale auditory system. ''Nature''. 2001 Apr 5;410(6829):686-90. PMID 11287954 ] Efforts to build directional microphones based on the structure of the fly's ear are underway.