Mega fruit fly!

[ABbuggin]

A few weeks ago, I found a very large fruit fly, I was quite excited to see it and soon wondered if I would be able to breed them. Not long after setting a few traps up, I had 7 very large individuals! A few weeks later, success!

Here they are next to a D. melanogaster! As you can see, much much bigger!

My stater culture from the 7 originals.

And what good would they be if they weren't mantis approved? :lol: (L3 P. whalbergii)

 

[sbugir]

Very cool. Any idea on what species of fruit fly it is?

Also,

What's your medium ?

 

[ismart]

Wow! Those D. melanogaster are on steroids. Hows the size comparison to D. hydei?

 

[ABbuggin]

Very cool. Any idea on what species of fruit fly it is?Also,

What's your medium ?

Sorry, not a clue what species it is. I use the medium from edsflymeat.com, the same stuff I use for all my fruit flies. They are a couple times bigger than hydei. I dont have any of those at the moment, otherwise I would take some pics.

 

[kamakiri]

Hrm...it does look like Drosophila. I have caught similar ones which looked like D. hydei but just a bit larger and the same color as yours. Was using rotten apple as bait.

I'm sure you'll be able to sell a bunch! Thanks for posting the pics.

 

[ismart]

Oh, so there not D. melanogaster? About how long did the life cycle take?

 

[ABbuggin]

Hrm...it does look like Drosophila. I have caught similar ones which looked like D. hydei but just a bit larger and the same color as yours. Was using rotten apple as bait. I'm sure you'll be able to sell a bunch! Thanks for posting the pics.

I was using banana for mine. What was interesting was the fact that I set 3 traps out within 15 feet of each other. I only caught one large fruit fly in the first two, and I caught 5 in the 3rd. I found that odd. :huh:

Oh, so there not D. melanogater? About how long did the life cycle take?

What's great is their life cycle is just as fast as melonogaster. They are not slow like hydei. Also, they don't fly a whole lot, they would rather walk.

 

[Orin]

Can you put one in some vernier calipers and snap a photo please?

 

[ABbuggin]

Can you put one in some vernier calipers and snap a photo please?

I don't have any calipers, but I can take a pic of one next to a metric ruler showing millimeters.

 

[ABbuggin]

Here you go:

A hair over 4mm of body length and 5mm including wings.

 

[Rick]

How do they compare to hydei?

 

[ABbuggin]

How do they compare to hydei?

I believe they are about 2x bigger. I have some hydei coming next week that I can take comparison pics of.