gonna do a hydei experiment!

[agent A]

hey all

so I have been making my own fruitfly cultures for years

first, I dissolve some molasses in warm water and stir in yeast (I let this sit for about 20 minutes)

then, I mix applesauce and vinegar together until it's really runny

then, I add baby cereal to the applesauce/vinegar mix until it's pretty darn stiff

then i add the water/yeast/molasses mix and make it runny once again

i pour it into cups, shove a paper towel in, add excelsior, and let it sit for 2-3 days before adding the adult flies, and walla!

but it seems that while this is fine for Drosophila melanogaster, it is suboptimal for D. hydei

so I am going to try some different culture media, including mantisplace media, fruitfly shop media, and repashy media

maybe i'll incorporate some of the cornell university recipes too

so follow along with me if you want to see how this experiment goes! I will probably make test tubes of each medium so I can place single pairs in it and collect data on development time and fecundity. this will also give me better replication! yay science!

 

[Introvertebrate]

Looking forward to your results.  I’ve heard that D. hydei have a longer lifecycle than D. melanogaster.

 

[Mystymantis]

Sounds exciting.

 

[TheWolven]

Definitely looking forward to this since I'm going to have some very hungry babies soon. Keep us updated!

 

[agent A]

well, the first go-around didn't work out too well

I made little vials of medium and added a single female to each, but most died

time to try a different experimental design!!

 

[Introvertebrate]

Do the commercially available fruit fly mediums include some ingredient that the D. hydei find agreeable?

 

[agent A]

so I tried 4 diet types, but the homemade I had been making and the fruitfly shop diet had such poor performance I decided not to do analysis on them

I compared mantisplace and repashy

here are the graphs:

the difference in the number of F1 emerging flies was NOT significant but the difference between the generation time WAS significant

there was no correlation between any performance measures and diet cost

 

[Introvertebrate]

So Rebecca's recipe performs well.  What are your secret ingredients Rebecca?

 

[TheWolven]

So Rebecca's recipe performs well.  What are your secret ingredients Rebecca?

Beating her to this lol. Unless you whip out a microscope, it's a trade secret! 

 

[agent A]

Beating her to this lol. Unless you whip out a microscope, it's a trade secret! 

I'm actually now testing a modification of her mix, swapping out the oatmeal for baby cereal

 

[Introvertebrate]

Beating her to this lol. Unless you whip out a microscope, it's a trade secret! 

Nobody makes cookies like Mom.