(588e) Fly Larvae Mix to Increase Eating Rates

Black soldier fly larvae are edible maggots that can transform tons of food waste into sustainable protein per day. Although they are known to have a collective motion around and inside food sources, a physical understanding of their high eating rates is missing. We take an active matter approach to studying larvae to show how their feeding behavior allows large aggregations to eat. Larvae form a dry, polar active system that exhibits either turbulent or jammed behavior. A combination of chemotaxis and quorum sensing allows larvae to find the easiest path to a food source. Active self-mixing allows hungry larvae to push full larvae from food, increasing their eating rates tenfold compared to hypothetical stationary larvae. We show that there is a boundary layer of mixing larvae near food, while the rest of the aggregation exhibits collective burrowing behavior using video tracking and compression force experiments.