This small guy is an alkali fly . Unlike most winged insect , it has the very unusual wont of lay eggs and forage beneath the control surface of the common salt - replete Mono Lake of Yosemite National Park .
Mark Twain even wrote about this peculiar demeanour in his 1872 memoirRoughing it , playfully noting:“you could oblige them underwater as long as you please – they do not bear in mind it – they are only proud of it . When you let them go , they pop up to the aerofoil as dry as a letters patent agency report . ”
Biologists from Caltech have late been re - take these flies and discovered the unique adjustment that let them to plunk in the quite inhospitable environment of Mono Lake . Their study is published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
They chance upon that the alkali fly pull in a miniskirt - submarine , creating a protective bubble of air around its body . Above water , alkali flies are pretty innocent - looking hairy fly . As you’re able to see in the picture above , when submerged in water supply they are encased in a silky placid line bubble .
The flies do this by covering themselves with a specialized wax that is ace - effective at repelling the carbonate - plentiful water supply . They are 36 per centum hairy than other coinage of fly ball , make it leisurely for air to get caught in a bubble around them . On top of that , they have big hooked feet that allow them to grapple on to underwater rock .
It ’s crucial to recall that Mono Lake is also no average lake . It ’s three times saltier than the ocean , packed with sodium carbonate and borax , and has an extremely high pH. As such , no fish can survive there . The wax of the diving event tent flap is especially well - fit out to deal with this slippy , tiptop - alkalic piss . Although a few insects use this method of “ scuba diving ” , no other fly could take a stuff shot in Mono Lake and live to say the story .
" It is such an incredibly weird affair for a fly to deliberately crawl underwater , " study source Michael Dickinsonpointed out , though he explained that the flies have n’t evolve a new means of remain dry , but instead just amped it up to a level unseen in most other insects .
" It ’s just a killer fizgig . There ’s nothing underwater to eat you and you have all the food you need . You ’ve just got to dive in perhaps the most difficult water in which to appease dry on the planet , " he shrugged .
fortuitously for them , they count on it out . " It ’s amazing how the organic evolution of such small - shell physical and chemical changes can grant an animal to occupy an entirely new bionomic niche . "
