Blowflies are one of the most commonly encountered insects, which can be attributed to their excellent invasive ability. They therefore provide a great model to understand how species can invade new environments, however little investigation has been done into the physiological traits which enable their success.
To address this gap, we targeted three species of invasive blowflies in New Zealand: Chrysomya rufifacies, Lucilia sericata and Calliphora stygia. We measured heat and desiccation tolerance between species.
Both C. rufifacies and L. sericata withstood incubation at 43℃ for significantly longer than the C. stygia. While C. rufifacies and L. sericata did not differ significantly in their average heat tolerance, C. rufifacies showed a wider variation in tolerance among individuals. Our findings also indicated that L. sericata were more resistant to desiccation stress than C. stygia.
Altogether, our results suggest that different blowfly species may have variable adaptive capacities that underscore their differential exploitation of niches during habitat invasion. This has important implications regarding how the relative diversity and distribution of blowfly species might change as the climate warms.