Scientists stunned as African lake fly larvae defy deep-sea survival limits

Photo credit: Dr. Philip Matthews For years, scientists have believed one major reason insects are almost absent from the ocean is simple physics: their air-filled bodies would collapse under deep-water pressure. But a tiny insect larva living in Africa’s Lake Malawi is challenging that idea in a surprising way.Every day, billions of lake fly larvae, called Chaoborus edulis, perform a remarkable vertical commute. By day, they sink more than 200 meters into the lake’s oxygen-poor “dead zone” to hide from predators. By night, they rise closer to the surface to feed, though that journey comes with its own danger, because fish are waiting along the way.A hidden survival trickResearchers from the University of British Columbia, Dr.Philip Matthews and Dr. Evan McKenzie, used a sonar system placed at the bottom of the lake to track the larvae’s movements, as per a report on Phys.org. But what they found was more than a trick of survival; a clever biological adaptation that might explain how these insects can survive such extreme conditions.When the team dissected the larvae, they found that part of their respiratory system had been converted into two pairs of tiny air sacs.The sacs act as...