“Other guys bring in a ton of fish and dump it in a heap in the middle of the orchard.” The farmers are convinced that the pungent bait makes a difference, and the biology of blowflies suggests that it might. “Some encourage flies by hanging large barrels from their trees and putting roadkill in them,” Finch says. Mango growers realized way back that flies are important pollinators. He’s traveled from Western Sydney University on the other side of the continent to test a widely held belief among mango growers: If you leave out rotting carcasses, flies will come, and more flies mean more mangoes. He’s part of a team investigating the role that flies play in pollinating crops and whether, like honeybees, they might be managed to improve yields. And it’s vital to his research into the pollinating prowess of flies. The loathsome odor, it turns out, is one he created himself. You just can’t get it off you.” Although we are talking on the phone, I get the impression he’s grinning. “It’s a beautiful place - remote, peaceful and blissfully shady beneath the trees,” Finch says. These days, the old airstrip is the access road to the vast Manbulloo mango farm - 4 square kilometers of orchards near the town of Katherine in Australia’s Northern Territory. When entomologist Jonathan Finch turns his dust-caked car off the highway and onto the old wartime airstrip at Manbulloo, he knows what awaits him at the other end: 65,000 blooming mango trees, an indescribably horrible smell and the unmistakable buzz of excited blowflies.

Carrion flies