Tuesday, April 22, 2008

LIFE IN SCIENCE ~~1: Ladybird Beetle Work

Meet my labmate Inga from Germany


What is she doing over there? Looking serious and all............What is she watching over?

I will give your 5 sec to make a guess

5
4
3
2
1

Times up!

We are actually observation the mating behaviour of two-spotted ladybird beetles (Adalia bipunctata). I can tell you what we are observing but you will have to ask Inga about the details of her experiments (TOP SECRET!!!).



That is a black two-spotted male mating with a red female

This is what we do, we put a male and a female ladybird beetle together in a tiny petri dish in hope that they will mate with each other (Which they do almost all the time and pretty much right away :P)

We record the length of courtship..........and I believe our record time so far was 6 hrs (correct me if I am wrong, Inga)

Can you imagine how painful this task is? Give it a try and you will know............although I have to say those ladybugs are really quite cute




Stay tune for the next posting...............

PREVIEW: FLY WORK (or Drosophila melanogaster work)

No comments: