Oxygen Consumption of Castrated Females of the Blow-Fly, Calliphora Erythrocephala Meig

The oxygen uptake of castrated females of Calliphora was measured and found to be of the same order as that of the ‘operated controls i.e. females operated upon in the same way except that their ovaries were not removed. This result confirms the conclusion drawn from previous experiments (Thomsen, 1949), viz. that the influence of the corpus allatum on the oxygen consumption works independently of the presence or absence of the ovaries. However neither in castrated nor in normal females could any correlation be found between the size of the individual corpus allatum and the rate of oxygen consumption of the fly.