Three life stages of one fly

This story starts with a wild ruellia (Ruellia nudiflora). But not the one above. I'm just using the photo as an illustration. As I mentioned in a recent post, wild ruellias think they own our place so I often yank them. On one particular ruellia that I pulled last week, I happened to spot something odd. What was that mini potato-looking thing on the plant? Was it part of the plant? And why were the ants interested in it? I posted photos of it on iNaturalist and learned that – oh, my goodness! – it was the pupa of a four-speckled hover fly (Dioprosopa clavata). Here's a photo on Bugguide.net that looks similar to my potato. Since my lesson on fly pupa, I now examine ruellias before I pull them. On one, I did find an empty pupa case so that was cool. 

Pupa on ruellia

Last night, while going over my new iNaturalist observations, I discovered that I've seen the four-speckled hover fly in three of its four life stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Isn't that cool? I thought so. 

Larva on ironweed