"Wild Type" Melongaster

[ethanblaze1017]

Just ordered 100 grams of wild type melongaster. I have a pooter(aspirator) but I have yet to work with winged fruit flies. With over 200 Mantids to feed at any time, I also need to be able to get an approximate idea of how many fruit flies I'm putting into each enclosure (as to not overwhelm the mantis). So my question is: how difficult will this be to do with winged fruit flies? Are they as difficult as people say they are to work with? Who has experience with them?

 

[mantiseater]

i use flightless fruitflies for all my small nymhps

 

[happy1892]

They are kind of difficult since they quickly become active after being slowed down via keeping them in a refrigerator for a while. Not sure exactly how long they stay lethargic after being taken out from the refrigerator, and I have not tried putting them in even colder temperatures than our refrigerator that only makes them slow instead of totally motionless (as if dead, just that they are so cold that they are paralyzed), I wonder if the wild D. melanogaster would stay "paralyzed" longer if I kept them even colder. Also, there are many types of Drosophila and similar types of flies which are quite interesting. You might want to catch some from the wild and breed them. lol

 

[happy1892]

i use flightless fruitflies for all my small nymhps

The wingless kind (D. melanogaster) I have read are smaller as adults.

 

[ethanblaze1017]

Thank you for all of the info happy1892! I'm hoping I'll be able to figure a method out with these guys

 

[CosbyArt]

I use wild ones myself. My old FF cultures died off and and was all I had on hand (local pet store doesn't sell them), at least after setting up a mesh covered cup with banana to catch them. I actually like the wild ones as they populate much faster than the flightless ones, last longer before having to add to new cultures, and are larger - not Hydei sized but not pin dot Melanogaster either.

For my wild FF I add a small hole on the side of the deli cup about 1/2" from the top - just large enough for my baster/pooter to fit through. I keep the hole sealed with a sponge, and when feeding from it I cover it with my finger. Depending on your media thickness you can also knock the culture on it's side to group all the flies together. I tend to get about a dozen for each squeeze of my baster.

I did get some flightless ones awhile back from a pet store in a nearby city, but haven't bothered them other then making new cultures so I have them. As my nymphs are getting larger and like the larger wild flies.

 

[sschind]

I'm sorry to say I am dealing with the flying variety right now. I made up 3 cultures from "flightless" adults and every time I open the lid it looks like someone kicked a giant puffball. I'm not sure where the stock came from but it certainly was not very good. I'm sure some people have their reason for preferring the flying variety but for the life of me I can't figure out why.

I'm trying to feed baby D. diadema and if I hold their cups upside down over the fruit fly cup when I open it I can actually get some flies in the cup.

 

[Ranitomeya]

The flightless strain of hydei fruit flies I keep will develop the ability to fly when rearing conditions begin to grow poor and the adults begin eclosing at a smaller size. They're big, fat, and completely incapable of flight in the first few generations of every culture, but they become small and very capable of flight near the end when the food is running out. Using those fliers to seed new cultures result in big, fat, and flightless offspring.

 

[sschind]

The flightless strain of hydei fruit flies I keep will develop the ability to fly when rearing conditions begin to grow poor and the adults begin eclosing at a smaller size. They're big, fat, and completely incapable of flight in the first few generations of every culture, but they become small and very capable of flight near the end when the food is running out. Using those fliers to seed new cultures result in big, fat, and flightless offspring.

Thanks for the tips but these were new cultures with the first generation of flies. Well, first generation for these cultures anyway, I'm not sure how many generations they went through before I got them. I still have the old culture I made them from and it has gone through another cycle and all these flies seem to be flightless though very small. I just made a couple of cultures from them to see what will happen. The guy I got them from says none of his are flying.

In all my years of culturing FFs I may have had a a couple of fliers in a few cultures but this is like a culture of fully capable fliers. I do have wild flies in my room and the only thing I can think of is that somehow they got into the culture. It sucks because they are producing like crazy and the flies are of really decent size. I'll just have to pop them into the fridge for a while before feeding but the first time i did that I dumped about 100 flies into a cup with 3 small D. diadema. Gotta have a gentler tap I guess.

for now I have vinegar traps all over my house and it seems to reduce their numbers, at least until I feed again.