Care and Rearing
Adult WOWBugs live for 23 weeks with no food, water, or special handling. To establish a new culture of WOWBugs, first thoroughly clean and disinfect a rearing container such as a test tube or babyfood jar. This step is critical to success. It's also the major reason why we advise setting up duplicate cultures, for occasionally a culture may mold despite one's best efforts. Then obtain a host. Being readily available commercially, blow fly (Sarcophaga bullata) pupae are most convenient, for they can be stored in the refrigerator in a covered container. If you're feeling adventurous, experiment. WOWBugs have been reared on larvae and pupae ranging from moths to honey bees and hornets. In nature, their most common hosts are fully mature mud-dauber larvae.
With your fingernail, carefully pop the tip off one end of the fly puparium, or external pupal overcoat, to expose a bit of the naked white pupa inside. Don't shake it out. (If you see any liquid after popping the end off, you have punctured the pupa. Discard it and try another.) Place two of these opened fly pupae in the rearing container with 510 adult WOWBugs, and cap with a tight-fitting lid or cotton plug. Even in a small vial, air exchange is sufficient. No further care is necessary beyond avoiding rough handling during the larval development period. After about 2 weeks you should see the pink-eyed naked pupae (Fig. 3) begin to fall out of the fly pupa skin. Under normal conditions, about 95% of the offspring will be females, the sex used for most classroom experiments and activities.
Figure 2 A WOWBug male (left) and female (right). They differ in wing size, color, form of the antennae, and presence of compound eyes.
Figure 3 WOWBug pupae. Red-eyed females vastly outnumber the eyeless males (left). Individual close-up (right).
To keep a continuous culture going, continue to place 510 newly emerged female adults into each of a few fresh containers with new hosts about once a month. This requires only about 5 minutes. For the rest of the month, the cultures can be safely ignored in your desk drawer.
To move WOWBugs about, use a light-colored pipe cleaner (yellow or white is best). WOWBugs readily cling to its nap, and against the light background the dark-colored insects are easy to see. To release them, gently tap the pipe cleaner tip on the surface of the container or tabletop until they are dislodged. To quickly round up loose WOWBugs, take advantage of their natural attraction to light and their tendency to crawl upward. Invert an empty vial, test tube, or other clear container over them. They will soon begin to crawl up the walls. By lifting the inverted container and placing it over other individuals, you can collect several wasps before quickly righting and capping the container.
Many activities with WOWBugs, such as the introductory examples presented in this article, require no magnification. However, for investigations that involve comparisons of living males and females, larval and pupal development, or grooming and courtship, deep-well projection slides make ideal containers to view individual WOWBugs under a stereomicroscope (2040X) or Magiscope®.
