tThat was video of a fly maggot using its body as a spring to catapult itself
through the air. Now, I don't know much about flies or maggots but I filmed that
video because I knew that maggot jumping, like this, had only been filmed in slow-
motion one other time. So, before I explain more about what's happening in
these videos, I want to show you more of them. More of this maggot jumping in
super slow-motion.
The reason why these videos are scientifically interesting is these are
lance flies. A group of flies that have, before this, not been known to jump.
Last year, these larval gall midges were the first kind of maggots to ever have their
jumps filmed in slow motion. In slow motion you can accurately describe the speed
and paths of the jump and also see which parts of the maggots body unlock and
release at the exact moment they start to jump. The gall midges latch two
micro-structured segments of their underbody together which holds them in a
loop while they build up internal pressure. When these segments slip loose
that stored energy is released and it flings them up and through the air. The
maggots I film do differently. They seem to be putting the ends of their bodies
together and then releasing them right when they jump. But, honestly, when I
filmed it I couldn't tell which end was the head and which wasn't. I had to ask my
friend Matt who is a fly expert to explain maggot anatomy to me.
So, fly maggots have lost most of the external hardened or scleritized head structures
that most other larvae in other insects have. And all that you can see on
the outside are the antennae, the palps, and the mouth hooks. So, what we see here
is the maggot using what looks like the mouth hooks to grab on to the posterior
part, or the tail end of the body where they grab on and then exert pressure and
then create this jump. Matt and I collected these maggots from a dead oak
tree right in the middle of NC State's campus. They were living right under the
bark, probably feeding off of a fungus that had infected the tree. It's nearly
impossible to identify fly maggots to species or even family. The only reliable
way, besides genetic sequencing, is to rear the fly to the adult stage. So
that's what I did. And I filmed that. So this is what it looks like when a fly
first emerges as an adult.
It's a little hard to see in that time-lapse sequence, but how they break out of
their puparium is they inflate this balloon-like structure that pops out of
the middle of their head.
They pump body fluid into their head and pop out the sac between their eyes
called the ptilinum. The ptilinum is a structure that is
used only during this part of the fly's life, to push their way out of that pupal
case. After they emerge, the structure recedes into the head leaving only a
trace of where it once was. called the ptilinal suture. Even with adult
samples of these flies, it can be difficult to assign a species name. After
looking at specimens under the microscope and being unable to identify
the species I took some high-resolution images and
sent them overseas to a world expert on the group. Through structures like the
divots above the antennae and these tusk-like hairs on the face, we were
able to actually ID it to a specific species Dasiops vibrissata.
So this could be the start of a new project in the lab, describing more of the
behavior and kinematics of these larval jumps. And what I like most about this
project as these organisms came from the middle of campus, from a dead tree right
there. And, believe it or not, that's not the only cool thing we pulled out of
that dead tree. Here's some footage of another larval insect from that same
dead tree.
That jumping larval insect is even more interesting than this one and we're way
further down the research road on that particular project. So you have to
subscribe to this channel to hear more about that story in the future.
I forgot to tell you why they're jumping in the first place!
Maggots are legless forms of insects and if they get preyed upon or if their
habitat gets disturbed they have this behavior, potentially, to get away really
fast or to disperse really fast. So, that's why they're jumping!