Based on my previous post
here, I decided to do a small experiment.
Original observation:
Quote:
[They don't like] Water spinach (and I'm guessing any other greens having high cellulose content).
They eat the melon and cucumber to the rind but ignores the greens.
You know, by observing they way they congregate around certain easily digestible food items, I'm beginning to suspect that they release chemical pheromones while they eat, like the way ants do? That would explain the way they gang up on certain food and sort of avoids the other harder to digest food, it just reminds me of hive behavior in other insects.
Oh, I also notice that one of the larvae that crawls up the bin after eating the melon leaves a thin "trail" of "slime", and there is a conga line of larvae following it. Now I'm not sure if this is just plain old melon juice full of nutrition they're following, or a chemical pheromone phenomena thingamagic, but it sure is intriguing...
Question: Can we harness/exploit this feeding behavior?
Hypothesis: By layering "tougher" food below a layer of easily digestible food, we can trick the larvae into eating tough food faster compared to a situation where they are placed separately.
Experiment design: A thin slice of melon is placed on top of a layer of water spinach. If the hypothesis are true, then the water spinach layer under the melon should be digested at a faster rate compared to the layer of water spinach without melon.
Result: Stay tuned!
