Fungus Gnat

Fungus gnat - Pupation and mating

Previously I had posted a picture of fungus Gnat Larvae. I was wishing to see the adult forms of those larva since then. Today I was lucky. Not only did I see the adult Fungus gnats I also witnessed their partial life cycle!
Here it is a different species though.

The fungus gnats were pupating, emerging from pupa and mating on the underside of an avocado branch. Each male Gnat was jealously guarding its share of pupa as seen in picture 3 and 4.

The male gnat would stand beside a pupa, occasionally inspecting it with its feet and antennae perhaps encouraging pupation. As soon as a fly starts emerging from pupa,the male becomes excited and it would try to mate with the still emerging female as seen in picture 1.

The mating lasted not more than 4 seconds approx. As soon as the males finished mating with a female they moved on to guard another pupa.Meanwhile mated females would stay still and dry off their wings and wait for the exoskeleton to harden.

Some females just after emerging would skitter off with their wings flapping and avoid the guard male only to be mated by other males.

There were 3 separate batches of pupa. Batch 1 had around 50 pupa, batch 2 less than 30. Batches 1 and 2 had already began emerging from pupa and mating while the 3rd batch was only just starting with pupation as seen in picture 5.No males were seen around this batch while there were multiple males and just emerged females around batch 1 and 2.

The females would eventually fly off but the males stayed put.

Size: Females : 2.5mm approx
Male: smaller than females.