www.sciencenews.org/article/how-b...-pizza-so-fast
Abstract, Science News, 2019
An individual Hermetia illucens larva doesn’t eat steadily, Shishkov found. One feeds for about five minutes on average and then stops for about another five. As a group of thousands, though, they flow continuously like a living fountain splashing up against the edge of their food, Shishkov and colleagues report February 6 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Shishkov borrowed techniques from the study of fluids, for instance treating larvae as particles moving with a current, and looked for overall patterns of flow in a writhing mass of as many as 10,000 insects. She tracked the directions larvae were wriggling and found that, around a chunk of food, a fountainlike flow develops.