In contrast to flying flies, walking flies experience relatively strong rotational gaze shifts, even during overall straight phases of locomotion. These gaze shifts are caused by the walking apparatus and modulated by the stride frequency. Accordingly, even during straight walking phases, the retinal image flow is composed of both translational and rotational optic flow, which might affect spat...

A new method of microstimulation of the blowfly eye using corneal neutralization was applied to the 6 peripheral photoreceptor cells (R1-R6) connected to one neuro-ommatidium (and thus looking into the same direction), whilst the receptor potential of a dark-adapted photoreceptor cell was recorded by means of an intracellular microelectrode. Stimulation of the photoreceptor cells not impaled el...

in aggregation of some of the enzyme. This has previously been suggested to take place in the housefly, Musca vicina (Ohnishi, 1958) and the blowfly, Calliphora (Mum & Bufton, 1973). When gels of the 50 %-satd. fraction were incubated with tyrosine (0.002~) only one band of activity was discernible and this corresponded to the slowest running catecholase band (Fig. le). The result shows that th...

Poultry litter usage in horticultural crop production is a contributor to nuisance fly populations, in particular stable flies (Stomoxys calcitrans L.) and house flies (Musca domestica L.). Extrapolation of adult emergence data suggests that approximately 1.5 million house flies and 0.2 million stable flies are emerging on average from every hectare of poultry litter applied as a preplant ferti...

The ability of flies to detect and fixate objects moving relative to their background was investigated in a flight simulator during translational tethered flight. The fly experienced optic flow that depended on its own actions and reactions in a similar way as in free-flight (closed-loop) conditions. Fixation of an object required turning responses towards it. The simulated distances between th...

Under the conditions of double choice in a Y-maze, proportion of flies gathering in its arm depended on its relative illumination, approximately so that (1) at, or below the lower critical relative intensity limit, it assumed a constant minimum value; (2) at, or above the species-specific upper critical limit, the proportion of choice assumed a constant maximum value; whereas (3) between these ...