At the age of almost touching 60, I find I still need to learn more as the days pass by :) I was in my lil space looking for insects to practice my photography skill and found this pair mating :p I became an unintentional peeping tom and this is what I captured on my camera LOL !
Mating Habits Of The Common Housefly - excerpts taken from here
Houseflies live only 15 to 30 days, but they devote a significant
portion of those days to reproduction. Mating starts with a short
courtship process initiated by the male. After the female’s eggs are
fertilized, she flies off in search of the nearest pile of smelly manure
or garbage and lays her eggs.
Finding Ms. Right
The
male is in charge of housefly courtship. He identifies available
females by the pheromones they produce. A pheromone is a chemical
signal, in this case one that lets the male know a female fly is
sexually mature and ready to mate. The male isn’t very subtle when he
shows his interest. He bumps into the object of his affection when she’s
flying, although mating takes place on the ground or another stable
surface. If both flies are already on a stable surface, the male jumps
on top of the female. The male shows his intentions by spreading the
female’s wings and touching or lapping her head. If the female isn’t
interested, she flies away or shakes the male off her body.
Mating Basics
If
a female fly wants to mate, she puts her ovipositor inside the male
fly’s genital opening, located at the bottom of his abdomen. The
ovipositor is a long thin tube that extends from the end of the female’s
abdomen. When she isn’t mating or laying eggs, the ovipositor stays
hidden. Once the ovipositor is in place, the male releases sperm, which
travel through the female’s reproductive tract to fertilize her eggs.
The entire mating process lasts from 30 minutes to two hours, notes
Animal Diversity Web.
The Bigger the Better
Females
usually mate only once, while males mate with many females. Males have
definite preferences when they choose females. Researchers at Chungnam
National University studied housefly courtship and mating practices and
discovered that males preferred to mate with large 7-day-old females. It
might sound as if finding a female would be an easy task, but some
males mistakenly target other males or even inanimate objects. This can
happen because some females don’t produce high levels of pheromones and
males can confuse small dark objects for other flies.
From Egg to Fly
The
female uses her ovipositor to make a hole in the manure, garbage or
other decaying material she has selected and releases her fertilized
eggs. She expels up to 150 eggs at one time and can lay 500 over the
course of three or four days. Eggs hatch into wormlike larvae, commonly
called maggots, eight to 24 hours after they’re laid. The maggots feed
on the manure, garbage or other organic material for about five days,
and then form pupae, hard shells that protect them as they transform
into mature flies. After four days an adult housefly emerges from each
pupa. The young flies begin mating just one to two days later.
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