A Small Step Backwards

Today felt like a small step backwards- it was overall pretty disappointing. We didn't see the large female adult return, neither did we see any eggs in the pod. We had seen her every day since her emergence, so to not see her today was especially worrisome, and made us think that predation may have unfortunately played a role.

Also, we noticed some very tiny crawl-off (pupa). We were worried that these tiny tiny pupa would not have enough physical resources in order to metamorphosize, but upon a literature review, this just means that from a small pupa will emerge a small BSF.

Today, what looked like a small (3-4 mm) female adult fly landed on the book that Rylo was reading. But we weren't able to get a good enough of a look at her so I have to keep the official count of female adults at 1.

Also, we saw some really interesting looking flies that looked remarkably like BSF (with waspish waists, etc), but they were irridescent blue/green, with heads that were entirely blue. Hopefully we'll be able to see them again and catch a closer glimpse.

And the bad news keeps coming. Today, we saw pest flies at the pod for the first time. We really hope that the synonome is working and that today is just a fluke. It is especially important that the synonome is working when we have adult females, because they need to clearly know where they need to come back to to lay eggs.

Let's hope next week will be more successful. Happy BC Day weekend!

The First Lady + more good news

Today, the crawl-off bucket had 20 pupa. The maggots also completely devoured the chicken feed, and hopefully the remainder of maggots will pupate within the next week or so. Strangely, there were also a few fungus maggots in the main part of the pod. This is the first time Rylo or myself have seen anything other than BSF within the pod (except, of course, for that one time a pest fly flew in, they buzzed right out again).

And on to the good stuff . . we have males! Four, to be exact. However, one isn't in such great shape- he has the same wing deformity that our previous two adult males had. Rylo and I hypothesize that this is due to low humidity but we'll have to fact check that one.

Not to end on a sour note or anything, but we do have one concern. Today, we clearly saw a large, healthy female maggot eating a pupa. The best that we can hope for is that BSF can tell sick from healthy pupa. Perhaps, the healthier pupa are the ones that crawl off (in to the bucket) when they are very mature larvae while the pupa that are in less than perfect health remain in the main part of the pod?

Day Camp + a Surprise

Today was overall a good day. Rylo and I gave an ~15 minute presentation to the 6/7-year olds attending Day Camp at UBC Farm. We started off by feeding a few maggots to the chickens, then took the kids over to the pod and explained how it worked. They were an inquisitive bunch and seemed most happy when they were allowed to hold the maggots themselves.

I had to leave right after the presentation to get to work so I wasn't able to be there for the wonderful surprise but . . . a few hours later, around 1pm, I received a phone call from Rylo telling me that we officially had our first adult female emerge! We're hoping that a few adult males will emerge so that she'll have some choices. Then, hopefully there's some attraction and egg-making. If we get some eggs in the next few days that would be absolutely amazing!

So yes, overall a good day. Giving the presentation to the kids was a growth experience- I still need to work on getting over my shyness in front of big groups. Baby steps . .

Temperature Update #3/Photos !!

Today, 27 July @ 10am, in the last 24 hours, max. temp was 22.4C, min was 19.6C. Not great, but we do have crawl-offs, which means the pod was warm enough for the maggots to mature, and crawl off to pupate. And the silver lining about this issue with temperature that we are attempting to remediate is that the lower temperatures will slow the rate of maturation, so that not all of the maggots will mature in to pupa and crawl off next week. Also, it does not look as though the maggots have fed at all- the feed dish (which used to be the prized possession of Rylo's cat) is completely full.

Today the crawl off count is 3 females and 6 males. Again, good odds- the ladies have some choices! Hope they make the right ones, and we get those coveted eggs in a few weeks.

Again, there were no pest flies around the bucket (we were very happy to see).

And . . here are the photos!!

Photo 1: The BioPod. Here I am holding the crawl-off bucket. The maggots are within the large grey container, and when they are ready to pupate, they crawl off (through the silver hose that you can see hanging down) in to the crawl-off bucket, that contains sawdust. The BSF instinctively knows that as a pupa, it prefers drier conditions and that the bucket is the place to be.

Photo 2: You can see the sawdust in the crawl-off bucket.

Photo 3: Some pupa! The dimorphism between the sexes during the pupal stage is quite apparent- contrary to what you may be thinking right now, the 3 large pupa on the left are female, and the 6 smaller pupa on the right are male.

Photo 4: Putting the crawl-off bucket back on the biopod after transferring the pupa to the larger bucket with all of the pupa. We have upgraded the bird cage that we were using before to a large 5-gallon bucket.

Again, these photos were taken at UBC Farm.

Wish me luck on my presentation to the kiddies tomorrow!!

How to Keep the Maggots Warm and Happy?

Rylo has proposed a solution to keep the maggots warmer, and thus happier and more active. When they are more active, they eat more, and mature faster which is what we want at this stage in the game.

He suggests what I think is a very solid idea: Put the chicken feed in an insulated cup, which will keep the feeding maggots warmer than the surrounding culture. We may even drill small holes in to the insulated cup so that only small maggots can enter. And just to be clear, by insulated cup, we mean (for example) the lid to a thermos.

I'll keep you updated on whether this works or out- we just introduced the thermos lid today.

Temperature Update #2

The pod was checked at 1pm today.

The temperature of the pod during the last 24 hours had a maximum of 22.5C and a minimum of 19.4C. Not great. And the maggots were clearly more dormant. Looks like Rylo and I will have to bust out our thinking caps and scheme up a way to make sure the temperature stays much higher.

But there is better news from today. In the pupa or 'crawl-off' bucket, we found 16 females and 49 males. Pretty good odds for the ladies. They'll be able to choose which guy suits their fancy. And hopefully this means we'll be seeing some eggs in the next few weeks! And hopefully these eggs will be laid in the pod, as the female adults will be attracted back to the pod by the synonome created by the maggots. (But as I've said before, I plan on doing an entire post on what exactly a synonome is, and how if differs from a pheremone).

With a couple thousand maggots, we can expect a steady supply of pupa/crawl-offs.

Hopefully I'll have more good news to report in the next few days to come . .

More Have Arrived

Today, we were happy to have received another shipment of 1700 maggots. They went straight to the Farm, to make a grand total of about 2500 BSF currently in the biopod.

Another 10 pupa were in the crawl-off bucket, and were transferred to the bird cage, the home of all of our BSF pupa.

In other good news, it does look as if our maggots are producing a synonome that is keeping pest flies away. Even though our biopod is a mere 50 meters from the big, smelly compost pile, Rylo and I have seen only one pest fly buzz around our culture (when we lifted the lid on the pod), and even this guy left quite quickly.

I know the terms 'crawl-off bucket' and 'lid' on the pod probably don't make a ton of sense to you; I plan on taking pictures early next week, and it will all become clear- that's a promise!!

Also, just received word that Rylo and I will be giving a presentation about our precious BSF the morning of next Wednesday. Our audience will be the 6- and 7-year olds that attend Day Camp at UBC Farm, and our presentation will be part of the ever anticipated Critter Week.

Temperature Update #1

The bugs look good! Likely due to the fact that the max. temperature (inside the pod) was 28.9C while the min. was a solid 22.4C. BSF tend to be very happy at this temperature range.

All of the chicken feed was consumed; it badly needed a refill. More updates to come in the next few days.

Pod - > Farm*

So the pod is officially at the Farm (the UBC Farm). But all is not well in BSF world- today the maximum temperature inside the Pod was 20.6C, which is far too low; BSF go dormant at 21C. Rylo had the idea of putting high tech insulation on top of the pod to keep the heat in. Also, when we transfer more BSF in to the pod (right now there are only ~ 600 while the pod can hold 100,000) they will generate more heat themselves. I think we should be okay, but we'll have a look tomorrow and see.

After a meeting with Dr. A, it was determined that I will write a ~10 page report about what I have accomplished during Phase 1 of our BSF project, and will include my thoughts, my understanding of BSF, any problems faced (this could probably be 10 pages in itself . .), and what we hope to accomplish in the future with this project.

Expect Pod/Farm photos next week!

Bad News About the Growth Chamber . .

Today we put a wireless transmitter in the growth chamber and were getting pretty good humidity readings in the high fifties and low sixties. But when we put 8 incandescent light bulbs in the chamber, the heat went up to 36C . . and the fan came on to chill the chamber, which dropped the humidity down to 33%. So this time we were actually there to see what happened last time, when we had the 100% mortality. Luckily we were there to prevent catastrophe #2; we scooped them up and brought them back to the insect chamber, which tends to have a steady humidity in the low fifties.

We must not be doing something right, because there's another growth chamber in the room that's running at a steady humidity of 90%. Peter, the guy who runs the growth chambers, can expect an email from me very soon. Because right now, the growth chambers are defeating us . .

Playing dead?

I was talking to Dr. A today about our little experiment, where we poked each pupa to see if they would respond to touch. Not a single one of our pupa responded to touch, but when we left them alone, they began moving (hence, we were able to determine that they were in fact, very mature larva, not pupa).

Dr. A said that while most pupa will respond to touch, many have a defense mechanism- when prodded, they will 'play dead'. Who knew?

How can you tell if a pupa is alive or dead?

With most of our larvae turning dark brown and becoming much more still as they mature, it became quite difficult to tell the difference between a mature larva and a pupa. Really the only way to tell the difference is keep your eye on them for an extended period of time and look for movement- larvae move, and pupa do not.

But even more difficult to tell the difference between are pupa that are alive vs. pupa that are dead. As you can see from my last post, pupa are dark brown and shriveled and do not move whether they are alive or dead. I wanted to do a count of how many pupa we had that were still alive, so I took the 96 total pupa to Dr. A and asked her what to do.

Dr. A said that pupa respond to touch. So, you can place a pupa under a microscope and lightly touch it (for example, with the end of a small paint brush). If it is alive, it will wiggle for a second. If not, it will obviously remain still.

However, an interesting note is that when Dr. A and I performed the above procedure, absolutely none of the pupa responded to touch. But they didn't look dead either. Dr. A and I chatted for a few minutes and I happened to glance over at the container of pupa and almost all (~90%) were moving! I even had to ask Dr. A to confirm if they were moving for a moment because I thought I was going crazy. The most likely explanation for this is that these BSF were very mature larvae, on the verge of entering the pupa stage within about 24 hours.

In an attempt to keep this larva/pupa as happy as possible, I constructed a new container. On one side, I placed moistened coffee grounds and wet paper towels, and on the other, I placed dry bran with a slightly moistened paper towel on top. This would allow the mature larva to have their preferred conditions and feed until they reached the non-feeding pupal stage.

Professional Photos

Here are some professional photos of the three life stages of BSF. I'd like to give major props to Duncan, who helped me greatly in the Learning Centre.

This is the larval or "maggot" stage. Notice the lighter, beige colour and large size of the life stage.

The pupa is the nonmoving stage of the BSF life cycle. Pupa are a dark brown colour and are significantly smaller than larvae.

And lastly, the adult. Here, you can see the wings are not fully developed, which is perhaps due to the low humidity of the insect room, where our BSF are kept. BSF occur natural in tropical environments such as the South (US), which is generally quite humid and hot. Once we are able to have more adults emerge, we will take them to our set-up at UBC Farm, where they will hopefully be happier and fully develop (and more importantly, mate!). But more on this set-up later.

Success at last !!

Today was a great day to say the least. Rylo and I were finally able to pick up our pod on campus and transport it to the growth chamber. We have yet to transfer the BSF because we first want to make certain that the humidity and temperature settings will be reliable. We learned our lesson the first time . .

Even more exciting . . WE HAVE TWO ADULTS!! I found one in the container with the larvae, and the other in the pupa container. Perhaps this means that adults can still emerge under more humid conditions? They are both on the small end, and we believe they are males. I plan to go to the Learning Centre on Friday to take professional photos of the beauties.

Pod-gate

Tragically, our biopod is stuck at customs, and has been for over two weeks while I was at grandma's noshing on delicious southern barbeque. (Thank you Dr. A for looking after the little guys while I was away). This is an issue since larvae and pupa need such different conditions for survival; larvae love extremely humid and hot environments while pupa prefer drier conditions. And it takes only two weeks for a larval to pass through all five instars and become a pupa. This means that we most definitely have at least a few pupa, and these pupa are unhappy with their current humid/hot environment. We had hoped to have the biopod installed by now; with the biopod, the larvae would be able to crawl off, in to a separate part (with drier, more ideal conditions) of the pod when ready to pupate.

Rylo and I considered a few options and this is what we decided to do: I spread all of the BSF out on a tray and transferred all extremely dark/coffee bean brown pupa in to a separate container with drier conditions. We're reallly reallly hoping for an adult (fingers crossed!). Here's the current count- Pupa: 17, Larvae: 113 (alive), Adults: 0.

Photo #1: Here you can see the lighter coloured larvae and darker coffee bean coloured pupa.

Photo #2: Yogurt container: pre-separation of larvae and pupa. The large majority of light coloured larvae have crawled to the bottom

of the container to be in an environment with

maximal moisture.

Attempt #2

Today we received our second batch of (600) BSF larvae. We made a few changes to our experiment: we purchased only medium-sized BSF, we will turn off the light in the growth chamber (BSF are photophobic), and will dramatically increase the humidity setting to 75%+.
Right now, they are all together, hanging out in a large yogurt container and are quite happy (and active) on a diet of coffee grounds. We are working on getting a supplier for chicken feed and once we do, we will switch their diet to chicken feed (it's much more balanced than mere coffee grounds).
I'm off to grandma's for two weeks and I hope some cute little pupa will greet me when I come back : )