I ask that because all the protocols I found on the web doesn't work.
Based on what I found, and using young larva developping at least 5 days on their foods, I have tested some food colorings (lipo and hydrophylic), some other like fluorescein, Eosin, Methylen blue, Curcuma powder, ... But all fail to color in the mass the body of larva.
Did you have some idea to obtain such nice red, blue or yellow larvae? Like those found in the fishing shop.
All suggestions are welcome :-)
j'ai fait suivre à Matthias Gosselin qui est expert en forensic entomotoxicology...peut-être aura-t-il des idées
A bientôt Yves :)
Bonjour Anne,
Merci pour la Rhodamine B :-)
Tu as une idée sur sa toxicité vis-à-vis des larves?
ok ! Du coup tu aurais déjà trouvé la solution..
Bonne chance alors :)
You have a paper Yves, "Effect of Rhodamine B on C. vicina development" Good luck!
As far as I know, the maggots from the fishing shops are dyed from the outside using coloring powders or liquids. Maggots are placed in a container, dye added and shaken well. Many of these colors however are quite poisonous or otherwise dangerous; colored maggots therefore are banned in a number of countries.
Dear Marta-Inés, Senta,
Thank you for your contributions!
Marta, please could you precise the reference of the paper you cited?
Senta, I will test this kind of coloring. What I had read is that dyes were included in the food. I have tested that without success until now.
Regards
Dear Yves,
food colorings can be used for the purpose, just not added to the food but from the outside. Rhodamine B, mentioned by Anne Laudisoit, was widely used to dye food before its carcinogenic properties were known.
I wonder, however, how long the colors remain on the maggots.
May I ask why you need varicolored maggots?
Dear Senta,
How long are the maggot colored, is also one of our question.
We would like to color maggots from different species to follow each species on food and learn if they prefer to aggregate or not. In final this could be used to improve our sampling methods on corpses.
It is already not a paper. Is a sugerence for YOUR future paper.
Hi,
what do you call "the mass inside the larval body"? which organs do you exactly want to stain? Dyes have different affinities and you should chose those (may be a mixture) able to stain what you want to reveal, i.e., nervous system, muscles, fat body, etc. If you follow this link you will find an article (there are many in the old literature) about staining insect tissues with useful information: https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/3520/V46N03_152.pdf;jsessionid=DC6FFD1E0CD3054B953A050978292205?sequence=1
All the best,
Claudio
Dear Marta-Inés, Thank you for the suggestion :-) We will see if we arrive to some good results :-)
Dear Claudio, Thank you for the reference. It is interesting even if the coloration was obtained by injection. This method is not really imaginable if we wish to stain several hundred of living larvae with the little disturbances as possible. But we could find there some inspiration :-)
All the best
Yves
Dear All,
Just a little feedback of our tests. Based of your information and what we found on the web and literature, we have tested nearly 15 kinds of products (from the curcuma to the Rhodamine-B). The best results were obtained with larva growing, at least 3 days, on meat mixed with Fluoresceine (resulting in light yellow larva) or Rhodamine-B (resulting in clear red larva). Larva are then colored in the mass. But this color is not permament. It is loss in around one days when larva feed on meat without color. So Rhodamine-B is our best choice.
Thank you for your help.
Great! would you publish a technical note? You should... Best wishes
Marta
Hi Marta,
Unfortunately a technical note is not in our pipeline soon. This will remains in the grey literature for some time.
Yves
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