Help with flies

[stortzjs]

Two questions:

1) What is the easiest way to get flies from a container into a nymph cup, without releasing most of them by accident?

2) Got housefly pupae in a small container, do they need to be gut-loaded after they hatch before feeding?

Thanks!

 

[PhilinYuma]

Two questions:

1) What is the easiest way to get flies from a container into a nymph cup, without releasing most of them by accident?

2) Got housefly pupae in a small container, do they need to be gut-loaded after they hatch before feeding?

Thanks!

1)FFs and HFs can be chilled in their container in the freezer for a few minutes (you'll have to experiment. Too short a time and they will recover too quickly; too long and you'll kill them) and then dumped into the cup. I still use the funnel that I got from Mantisplace with my first mantis order, for FFs, but some folks like to just pour them in.

2) Mantids are obligate carnivores. Gutloading prey, a practice learned from herpers, is of no help. In fact, the vegetable matter, mostly sugars, distends the gut without providing nutrition. Mantids are "tritrophic" which means that yummy vitamins and such incorporated into the vegetarian (saprophytic) prey's body (i.e. protein) can benefit the mantid.But by all means feed the flies!

 

[sporeworld]

...Gutloading prey... is of no help. In fact, the vegetable matter, mostly sugars, distends the gut without providing nutrition.

Could this explain why some mantids react poorly to eatting vegetable-eatting prey, like crickets or katydids? They they can handle undigested sugars, but not veggie matter...?

 

[PhilinYuma]

Could this explain why some mantids react poorly to eatting vegetable-eatting prey, like crickets or katydids? They they can handle undigested sugars, but not veggie matter...?

Yeah. By "undigested sugars" I rather sloppily meant complex sugars like glycogen and trehalose that are broken down into simple sugars by enzymes such as amylase and trehalase. Cellulose is also a carbohydrate.

Animal digestive enzymes, whether in insects or mammals, tend not to digest the cellulose in plants (there are exceptions, though, that don't include mantids, cf this elderly but FREE article: .http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25406/1/0000855.pdf ) The job is performed by specialized microorganisms which are found in the gut of such vegetarian insects as crickets and grasshoppers, but do not flourish in the mantid's gut.

So what happens to the cellulose? Beats me, though I assume that it is excreted with the uric acid.chunks.

 

[stortzjs]

Thanks for the info. What's a good diet for the flies?

 

[Rick]

Two questions:

1) What is the easiest way to get flies from a container into a nymph cup, without releasing most of them by accident?

2) Got housefly pupae in a small container, do they need to be gut-loaded after they hatch before feeding?

Thanks!

I assume you're talking about houseflies? Stick the container of flies into the freezer just long enough for them to stop moving. PIck them out with long reptile tweezers and drop into mantis home. Very easy. Be careful though with houseflies due to their small size. It doesn't take long for them to stop moving from the cold. It can take bluebottles minutes, but the same doesn't hold true for houseflies.