Everyone knows the feeling of moving into a new house – big empty spaces, full of possibilities, but devoid of personality. What every home needs is furniture – somewhere to sleep, somewhere to hang out. So over the course of the last few weeks we have been upgrading the insectary where the pupae emerge as adult flies, mate, and lay eggs. There is no Barry White or beds covered in rose petals, but we have designed and build new pupation boxes, where the pupae rest for 8-15 days, whilst inside the pupa (the hard outer shell, like a caterpillar’s cocoon), the larva metamorphoses into a fly. It’s cool, dark, and safe. We painted the boxes silver to reflect the heat, and covered the rooves with a heat-proof layer, as well as layering banana leaves on top to reduce the direct sunlight. Then, because fly pupae (and newly emerged adults) are so vulnerable to predators, to prevent unwanted visitors we drilled small holes in the front of the boxes big enough for flies to emerge, but too small for frogs and lizards to get in.
The new pupation boxes (nicknamed ‘the spaceship’) replace the dilapidated boxes we purchased from a previous student, which didn’t withstand the rainy season, nor provide the necessary volume for the quantity of pupae we’re producing.
We introduced some plants for the adult males to perform their lekking behaviour. Essentially, hanging out on leaves, waiting for females who are ready to mate to fly past, at which point they take off, catch the female and bring her down to the leaf to complete copulation. (lekking video – males on leaf).
And after 3 months on-site, the ‘garden’ surrounding the net house was in desperate need of attention, so we spent a morning cutting back and pulling out the plants immediately surrounding the net house, and those that had started growing inside. The fertile soil, intense sunshine and heavy rainfall have enabled the plants to grow faster than anything I’ve seen before! During the gardening is when we discovered that ‘someone’ had kicked the back doors in, and invited themselves into the house. This is presumably how the geckos, frogs and snails are getting in, so scheduling regular security checks has been added to the monthly checklist. Now all we need is a letterbox and a nice big sign on the front…
