Fly larvae observed moving in pitch at Trinidad’s Marac site have prompted an international research collaboration to investigate their identity and how they survive, according to University of the West Indies biologist Ryan Mohammed.
Mohammed said he and Professor Ramsubhag, from UWI’s Department of Life Sciences, spotted the larvae during a visit to the site several years earlier.
He subsequently described the discovery to staff during a visit to the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum in Los Angeles, where he was shown oil flies found there.
According to Mohammed, researchers from UWI, Middlebury College and the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum have since formed a working group to study the Trinidad flies.
Their questions include which species occurs locally, what it eats and how it can survive in the pitch environment.
Mohammed said the researchers suspected the larvae might feed on carrion, but presented that explanation as a possibility still under investigation.
He placed the work within a wider interest in organisms adapted to pitch, noting that some microbes can survive in that environment despite being unable to live in other habitats.