Author: Susan Milius / Source: Science News
It all started with the can’t-tear-your-eyes-away video of black soldier fly larvae devouring a 16-inch pizza in just two hours.
Watching sped-up action of the writhing mass inspired mechanical engineer Olga Shishkov of Georgia Tech in Atlanta to see what makes these insects such champions of collective feeding.An individual Hermetia illucens larva doesn’t eat steadily, Shishkov found. One feeds for about five minutes on average and then stops for about another five. As a group of thousands, though, they flow continuously like a living fountain splashing up against the edge of their food, Shishkov and colleagues report February 6 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Shishkov borrowed techniques from the study of fluids, for instance treating larvae as particles moving with a current, and looked for overall patterns…
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