PhilinYuma
Well-known member
That makes as much sense to me as anything. I know that yeast is transmitted in that way.
worm parasites in fruit fly culture?
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I was thinking about this in bed last night (ok, so I have a problem). Could the eggs survive the pasteurization process? Meaning they are still in the vinegar. And then hatch later, or possibly hatch in the presence of food?
PhilinYuma
Well-known member
Interesting thought, though they'd have to survive more than pasteurization.
You could get some worms from Carolina or whomever you do business with, and do your own pasteurization. I'm not sure what it is these days or whether the time/temp for vinegar is different from milk, but you could use a water bath and run it at 160F for 16 mins and chill it to 40F for 4mins, and see if the critters survived. Of course, though, the vinegar is filtered as well. I don't know whether they run it through a huge mechanical filter or simply centrifuge it. At any rate, if the pasteurization kills the eggs (and I'm not at all sure that it will) then you don't have to worry about the second part.
infinite213
Well-known member
Well apple cider vinegar is not pasturized and still contains some mother of vinegar and you can get it at any store. So the eels can come from the apple cider vinegar.
infinite213
Well-known member
Another paradigm: I have found that the vinegar eels are only in the cultures that contain the wild D. Melanogasters.
I have used the same apple cider vinegar in all of my cultures, the eels do not show up in the other cultures. So maybe they are not vinegar eels, but nematodes? Anyone have any input on that?
I have used the same apple cider vinegar in all of my cultures, the eels do not show up in the other cultures. So maybe they are not vinegar eels, but nematodes? Anyone have any input on that?
PhilinYuma
Well-known member
Vinegar eels are nematodes, so that's not an issue. Your useful observation supports Peter J.F.'s suggestion (post #19) that they come from eggs deposited first on the FF larvea and move firstonto the pupae and then on the eclosing flies, in the same way that we know that yeast spores can be transmitted. I posted an old article a while back in which the author sterilized ff pupae --without killing the flies inside -- and found that the medium used by the eclosed flies contained no introduced yeast, whereas a medium used by flies from unsterilized pupae did. This certainly solves the riddle of how they could have been carried in, let alone live in, pasteurized vinegar.
Another possibility is that they were deposited on the flies by Intergalactic Space Nematodes (ISNs). They will sometimes try out their World Domination Scheme (WDS) by infecting something inconsequential like an FF culture, and if that works (and it obviously does) they will next send down a Probe (P) which will insert their eggs into your (wait for it!) nose, from whence they will invade and eat your brain. Slowly.
Thanks for making this interesting post before it is too late (like tomorrow)!
I thought I was crazy when I brought my first maggot Phil, if I culture vinegar eels, I will have comfirmation ! :tt2: :stuart:
And my friends think I'm nuts for saying that all the UFOs that have been seen through out time contain starving mantids that are here to steal our natural resource...insects.
Harry
PhilinYuma
Well-known member
Oh, do, do! Submit it as an experimental proposal. Show that wild mel cultures contain the little buggers (you'll have to get a culture from gio) and that commercial mels don't; contaminate a commercial culture with vinegar (lots and lots of vinegar!) from a wild mel culture, and see if successive generations transmit the little buggers. You can dress it up with a nice MVA and a pretty graph, and you should be ready for a sponsored article in the Vinegar Eel Gazette!
infinite213
Well-known member
Did an experiment to see if vinegar eels would come straight from the vinegar without any fruit flies.
Took a 32oz cup with cloth lid mixed one part apple cider vinegar to one part sugar water and then mixed in some yeast.
After 2 weeks no vinegar eels. So the nematodes definitely come from the wild fruit flies. Started using white vinegar in the cultures anyways.
Took a 32oz cup with cloth lid mixed one part apple cider vinegar to one part sugar water and then mixed in some yeast.
After 2 weeks no vinegar eels. So the nematodes definitely come from the wild fruit flies. Started using white vinegar in the cultures anyways.
PhilinYuma
Well-known member
Dang! It's so nice to see someone doing an experiment instead of resorting to IMHO! Biology experimenets nowadays have become so sophisticated and use so much math that many amateurs, like us, can be put off, but J. Henri Fabre did relatively simple experiments and taught us a lot about insects in the process. 
infinite213
Well-known member
Yeah I cant seem to mess with anything without doing experiments. Speaking of Biology (I think Botany is under Biology right?)
Off topic but one of the coolest things I think is plant tissue culturing. I would love to have the environment and resources to do that. One unique thing about plants is that they can regenerate an entire plant out of a few meristem cells. But that's another topic all together.
Off topic but one of the coolest things I think is plant tissue culturing. I would love to have the environment and resources to do that. One unique thing about plants is that they can regenerate an entire plant out of a few meristem cells. But that's another topic all together.
