Importance Of Blow Fly

Great Essays
In the insect world there are a plethora of fascinating creatures fulfilling their own specific ecological niches all across the various ecosystems of this planet. Among these, you may have observed flies of metallic luster, colored blue or green or black, near garbage, filth, rotting meat, or even flowers that possess a pungent smell. These cosmopolitan Blowflies, belonging to order Diptera and family Calliphoridae, may seem filthy (and they actually are), yet they are actually quite useful.
The word ‘’Blow fly’’ comes from an olden English adage for meat that had their eggs laid on it, called ‘’fly blown’’. Aptly named as the maggots of blowflies are scavengers of carrion and dung. The meat which has blowfly larvae on it appears to be blown
…show more content…
You may be shocked to read that in certain areas blow flies are actually more efficient pollinators than honeybees. These areas being the flowers of plants that give off pungent, rotten odours e.g. onion and cabbage. Another thing to consider is that blow fly pollinators have better pollination efficiency in greenhouses compared to most other pollinators. They are easy to rear and maintain, and it helps that their preferred plants are mostly planted in greenhouses.
Not only greenhouse crops, but fruit orchards as well are considered as quite suitable for pollination by blowflies. Studies have confirmed that there is a positive impact between the weight, quality & quantity of mangos and their pollination by blowflies. Another study showed that for orchids, while bumble bees were more efficient pollinators, they also visited less compared to blowflies, thus more pollination was done by blowflies despite them being less efficient.
Regarding flower preference, we can conclude that in general flies are attracted to flowers of simple shape, pale colour, and pungent odours. The nectar must be easily obtainable for the flies, and the plant's sexual organs well exposed if pollen transfer is to be readily accomplished. Apart from the above mentioned plants, blowflies are also used as effective pollinators of Brassicae, Carrots, and

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Fruit Fly Lab Report

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Did research on what males and females look like. We observed the frozen flies. On the first week we used fly nap as an anesthetic for the flies and waiting for them to fall asleep. We sexed the flies and put 10 male and 10 female into a tube.…

    • 1224 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Yucca Moth Lab Report

    • 2013 Words
    • 9 Pages

    She tested if the survivorship of T.cassandra is controlled by the extrinsic factors dehydration and predation. She did this in a few stages, first testing larval survivorship by comparing the number of scars present, indicating eggs under the surface of the flower, to the number of mature larvae. She then conducted a flower microclimate experiment in which mesh bags were placed over individual plants to determine if abiotic (non-living) factors were important in relation to the survival of genomes. Measurements were taken on the changes in microclimate, in relation to temperature and relative humidity. The impact of larval feeding was recorded; measured by number of larvae per fruit and the number of seeds consumed by each larva.…

    • 2013 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    “You Asked: Are the Honeybees Still Disappearing?” The Honeybee population is decreasing rapidly, and that means a fair portion of the world's crops are as well. Many crops are partially or totally dependent on being pollinated by Honeybees. However while media attention has diminished, there is still reason to worry about the smallest and most indispensable farm workers. Dr. Greg Hunt, a Honeybee expert at Purdue University has said that the status quo was grim for 2104’s winter.…

    • 91 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    "The Case of the Poor Man's Bees" In “The Case of the Poor Man’s Bees,” a rich man (John) and a poor beekeeper (myself) are neighbors having adjacent gardens. John argues that my bees are harming his flowers while they are feeding on them. He does not see the bees as a source of pollination and a beneficial source for his plants. As a result of, he asked me to move my bees so that they would stop feeding on his flowers. I insisted that the bees were simply pollinating the flowers and therefore, refused to move them.…

    • 525 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    As a group we have taken two sterile plastic vials and placed a cup of Drosophila medium powder into each one. After adding a cup of the medium with added half a cup of distillated water into the plastic vial, which allowed the medium to dissolve into it. We allowed a few minutes for the media to be absorbed and afterwards we applied a cotton plug to close the entrance to the vial. Anesthetizing the Drosophila flies In the lab, we had the fruit flies already asleep in a green bucket filled all the way up with ice.…

    • 348 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    These are known as secondary, or facultative, endosymbionts. In whiteflies, at least six different genera of bacteria have been identified, although not all occur within a single whitefly species or geographic region. For example, in Israel, Hamiltonella has been detected only in the B biotype of B. tabaci, whereas Wolbachia and Arsenophonus are known only from the Q biotype. However, Rickettsia is found in both B and Q…

    • 282 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Bumblebees Classification

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Flowers play a prominent role in a prosperous bumblebee habitat, this is due to the flowing plants providing nectar as it high in sugar and sustains a bumblebees energy levels and is their main source of fuel. The flowers also provide pollen; pollen provides a large array of necessary proteins and nutrients needed to ensure…

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    To sex the fruit flies, the flies were first transferred to an empty culture vessel to be anesthetized with Fly-Nap. Then the flies were moved to a wide field stereomicroscope and separated by gender. Male fruit flies have heavy dark bristles around the base of the genitalia, and females do not. After the F1 flies were sexed, males and females were put into a culture vessel to breed the F2 generation. As the F2 flies hatched over a seven-day period they were counted and categorized.…

    • 397 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Fruit Fly Lab Report

    • 1243 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Name: Enrique Vazquez PS ID #: 1259993 BIOL 3311 Fall 2014 Date: October 2, 2014 Gene: Bar TA Instructor Name: Fahmi Mesmar Lab Section: 16258 Writing Assignment 3: Eye morphology of Drosophila melanogaster; Bar mutation effects on ommatidial development of the compound eye. Introduction: Drosophila melanogaster have been used for centuries as model organisms due to their relatively small size as well as their inexpensive and simple diet. Fruit flies also have to ability to reproduce in large amounts considering their relatively short life cycles.…

    • 1243 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Oak Savanna Research Paper

    • 1294 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Savannas are bumpy grasslands with distant shrubs and trees. They are normally in a warm climate year round, with only two seasons, very long and dry season and the wet season. Roughly the temperature stays above 70 degrees F all year. This is a generic description of a generic savanna, but the Oregon Oak Savanna in Oregon is no where near generic. The Oregon Oak Savanna is home to many plants and animals that are massively influential on the human race.…

    • 1294 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fruit Fly Lab Report

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages

    For this lab we conducted a population genetics study on the frequency of wild and apterous flies within a small population of fruit flies. The fruit fly Drosophila works well for genetic and evolutionary geared studies because they have a relatively short generation time but are intricate enough to reveal some biological principles that are parallel to many different kinds of eukaryotic organisms. When exposed to artificial selection in laboratory experiments, fruit flies have experienced dramatic changes behavioral and evolutionary traits within ten generations or less (Goldsmith, 1991). It is important to note that wild flies have wings and apterous flies do not. The purpose of artificial selection is for humans to modify species over generations by intentionally breeding two organisms with the objective of acquiring a specific trait.…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    First of all, they are small enough so that scientists can store many of them at once. However, these flies are also large enough for us to be…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Honeybees Decline

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages

    These seemingly tireless creatures pollinate about one-third of crop species in the U.S. Honeybees pollinate about 100 flowering food crops including apples, nuts, broccoli, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, celery, squash and cucumbers, citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe, melons, as well as animal-feed crops, such as the clover that’s fed to dairy cows. Essentially all…

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    Introduction Colony collapse disorder (CCD) is causing a decline in honeybee population in the United States that in turn affects the nation’s economy and ecology. This paper will examine what CCD is, what the possible causes of CCD are, its impact on the nation’s economy and ecology, different treatment options, how this impacts the local area around the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and what the future might hold for bees in the United States. Colony collapse disorder is a disease that causes worker bees to inexplicably not return to the hive resulting in abandonment and eventual death of the hive (PR Newswire, 2012). In fact, when this disease takes hold of a honeybee hive, there is a distinct lack of bees in and around the hive, dead or alive (Fries, 2014). So far, no single marker has been found that causes CDD, although there has been speculation from climate change and pesticides to parasites (Watanabe, 2009).…

    • 1782 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Small Hive Beetle Essay

    • 1132 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Aethina Tumida, Small Hive Beetles (SHB), is native to sub-Saharan Africa, and it is a regular pest to the African subspecies of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera Linnaeus. Be that as it may, the beetle has been located outside of its natural habitat, where it is known to cause extensive damage to the plethora of colonies of the European subspecies of honey bees. In 1996, the small hive beetle was first sighted in the United States across a variety of states. There is no clear answer to how the beetles came over to the United States, but a multitude of people have the belief that the SHB first settled in Florida, and as the beekeepers from Florida migrated across the United States, the beetles followed. A. tumida is an invasive species and is causing many damages to the beekeeping…

    • 1132 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays