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Morph: Short for metamorphose, it means to change or transform from one form to another (such as from a caterpillar to a butterfly) or from one shape to another. There are hundreds of thousands of insects, which include bees, beetles, flies and moths. Insect: A type of arthropod that as an adult will have six segmented legs and three body parts: a head, thorax and abdomen. These scientists can study many different subjects, including the microbiology and genetics of living organisms, how species change to adapt, and the fossil record (to assess how various ancient species are related to each other and to modern-day relatives). That allows the flies to spot danger while the body stays hidden in the greenery.Įvolutionary biologist: Someone who studies the adaptive processes that have led to the diversity of life on Earth. The eyes naturally periscope outward and upward. In the wild, Chen finds these fruit flies on long stems of some berry brambles. Any pushing and shoving, Chen says, is “done with other body parts.”Įxtreme eyes also may have other benefits. But there’s no knocking and locking stalks in fierce fly disputes. They can go eyestalk to eyestalk with uppity intruders. These Pelmatops and other kinds of stalk-eyed flies sometimes face off. While the headgear can burden a flying insect, long eyestalks may give flies some swagger. Her shorter stalks weren’t as magnificent as his. tangliangi mating with a female known by a different species name. Researchers don’t know much about these flies because there have been so few to study. Chen suspects that what are now named as two species may be just two sexes of the same species. Those eyestalks, she says, “seem slightly stiff, but still flexible.”įemales of the species may raise eyestalks too - if Chen’s team has found the right females. This evolutionary biologist works at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Yet “they are not flopping around while partly inflated,” says insect biologist Xiaolin Chen. Video images show that the eyestalks curl and rise irregularly. The first published photo sequence of their eyestalks stretching appeared in the September Annals of the Entomological Society of America. Now scientists have gotten a better picture of P. Yet Pelmatops flies have gotten so little scientific attention that a lot of their basic biology has been a string of question marks. Huangfu et al/ Annals of the Entomological Society of America 2022īiologists have known that eyestalks evolved in eight different fly families. The following day, the fully periscoped adult is ready to explore. Over the following 34 minutes (B–H), the gangly eyestalks grow and eventually darken, stretching the eyes away from the body. Just 16 minutes after exiting the capsule, the eyes are still close to his head (A). This fly guy emerged from a little capsule where he changed from a plump wormy larva into a sleek adult. Images from a lab video show the somewhat awkward stages of eye extension in a male fruit fly ( Pelmatops tangliangi).