Locomotion by jumping in the Mediterranean fruit-fly larva Ceratitis capitata

Abstract

IN contrast to terrestrial locomotion in animals with rigid internal or external skeletons (such as insects or vertebrates), caterpillar crawling is slow and energetically costly¹. Biomechanical constraints may be responsible for the high cost of crawling locomotion¹, but the caterpillar body plan, which uses hydraulic-based skeletal and locomotory systems, does not necessarily preclude the possibility of high-#150;speed locomotion as has been suggested¹. I report here how the last-instar larva of the Mediterranean fruit-fly jumps. Jumping increases the maggot's speed to 0.5 m s⁻¹ per jump, or by 200-fold over crawling. Jumping occurs at a stage when the maggot is particularly vulnerable to parasitization and predation. The fly larva provides the only known example of jumping by a soft-bodied legless organism.