Syrphid Rearing Help
I recently acquired a plant with some aphids on it, so I decided to try and get rid of them naturally. I captured a female Syrphus/Eupeodes hover fly and held her in a bag over the plant for about a minute. She laid several eggs on the plant, and I released her. The eggs hatched within three days, and several larvae are now eating the aphids. Unfortunately, it seems that I will now run out of aphids before the larvae can reach maturity. Right now, they each eat one or two aphids per day, but according to a study about rearing syrphids I found online, they can eat hundreds per day when they are larger. If this is true, there are nowhere near enough aphids to rear them all. As there are very few aphids outside now, I can't release them either. Is there any alternative food I could feed them, such as other hemipterans or dead insects? Can they mature with less food or will they cannibalize? Thanks for helping!
Contributed by Hexapoda on 11 April, 2021 - 12:51pm |