Body changes at the brink of adulthood can get awkward in humans, but at least our eyes don’t pop out of our heads on stalks longer than our legs.
However, high-rise eyes give the adult male macho pizzazz. Pelmatops fruit fly. In one of the stalkier types P. tangliangiA new study has shown that the transformation of your eyes to make them look bigger takes just 50 minutes. Once stretched, the skinny eyestalks darken and harden, keeping the eyes stuck out like selfie sticks for the rest of the fly’s life.
These are the details P. tangliangi’s eye lift come from The first photo sequence published of their ocular bloomingIt appears in the September Annals of the Entomological Society of AmericaBiologists know that eyetalks evolved in eight different fly families. Yet PelmatopsFlies have received so little scientific attention, that much of their basic biology is a series of questions marks.
Video images show that the eyestalks curl irregularly and rise unevenly. Yet “they are not flopping around while partly inflated,” says Xiaolin Chen, an entomologist and evolutionary biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. “They seem slightly stiff, but still flexible enough.”
Females of the species may raise shorter eyestalks too — if Chen and her colleagues have found the right females. Chen believes that the two species now called “two species” may be just two species based on what is available. A male is described in the new paper. P. tangliangiMating with a male of a different species. Her stalks aren’t as magnificent as his, but she has some.
The headgear may be too heavy for a flying insect but long eyestalks can give them some extra swagger. These PelmatopsOther stalk-eyed flies, as well as other types, face off eyestalk to eyetalk with intruders. There’s no knocking and locking stalks in fierce fly disputes though. Any pushing and shoving, Chen says, is “done with other body parts.”
Extremely bright eyes could also be beneficial. Chen has seen these fruit fly in the wild on long stems. Rubus berry brambles. The eyes naturally periscope upward and outward, allowing the flies see danger while the bodies remain hidden under the greenery.
