# flightless fly breeding



## Johnald Chaffinch (Mar 10, 2006)

sorry if this question has been asked before...

is it possible to breed flightless/wingless fruit flies without later generations turning into flying ones?

also what's the difference between flightless and wingless fruit flies?

and which is best to feed mantids?


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## yen_saw (Mar 10, 2006)

Hi Jonald, Unfortunately, it is almost inevitable that some will gain the strength to fly after a few generations, and mixing other flightless or vestigial wing ff from other source will make it worse. HOwever, so far i have been lucky using wingless ff for 6 generations and none has the capability to fly so that's the best bet.

As far as i know, flightless ff are the one with wings and paralyzed flight muscle and but have the capability to hop around. Whereas wingless are the one completely witout wing that resembles ant. SOme people told me that it is better to have flightless ff compare to wingless cos mantis like to chew on the wing but i found that is totally unfounded.


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## infinity (Mar 10, 2006)

Yeah, Yen's pretty much got it... flightless have wings but messed up muscles, wingless (duh), and curly wings have the *curly Oster (CyO)* balancer chromosome (genetics...) which is lethal with homozygotes (i.e. two copies of the gene) and if you cross two flies with curly wings, if you draw a punnet square (again, genetics) - of the offspring, 1/4 will die in in the fly, 1/2 will have the curly wing and 1/4 will have the normal wings. I'm not sure about the other two, but that's the genetics behind the curlies...

To maintain a stock:

Take out maybe 10 PUPAE and separate them until *hatching* - if they hatch and they're winged, throw them. Mate the ones that are curled (i.e. the wings do not fit flat on top of each other).

Like i said, 1/4 will be potentially winged.

The reason why i say collect the pupae is that once adult, you won't know whether they've already mated with the winged flies or not.

-but on that topic, livefoodsdirect made a mistake in my order and instead of getting locusts, crix and flies, I got 3 sets of flies... hopefully this is being rectified but it's easy to see the difference when you have all 3 infront of you


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## Johnald Chaffinch (Mar 10, 2006)

hey thanks for the help.

livefoods.co.uk messed up my order last time, gave me two lots of flies rather than flies and cricks...


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