Does anyone know how to breed a flightless fruit fly culture from a normal fruit fly culture?

[lawman123]

Hello. I am from the Philippines and it is very hard to impossible to find anyone selling flightless fruit flies here. So I figured, I'll make one myself. After searching google, there doesn't seem to be any information on how to breed a flightless fruit fly colony from an existing with-wings fruit fly colony.

Has anyone here ever had any experience doing this?

 

[kingshockey]

i dont think you could and if you could it wouldnt be easy since you would have to find/isolate a pair with that genetic defect/dna or what ever that goes into making them flightless then hope they breed true for you. probably be easier to start a colony and then slow em down using the fridge before feeding em off

 

[Poonjab]

You have to tear all their wings off first. Then mate them.

 

[viper69]

Buy flightless ones if you can

 

[Albireo Wulfbooper]

You would need to have some luck in getting a flightless mating pair from a culture of wild-type flies, since such mutations are random and not incredibly common. It's not impossible, but quite unlikely - typically when mutations are required in labs, they need to induce higher mutation rates to get a decent chance of seeing significant numbers of mutants that they can then select from.

 

[USNGunner]

You have to tear all their wings off first. Then mate them.

This is how I got sterile house flies the one year. I think word got out, we haven't had fly problems since.

 

[Scorpiobsession]

Flightless fruit flies can gain back their flight ability in warmer temperatures. Wingless are the most effective. Both need to be separated from WT fruit flies or else the recessive trait will be lost.

 

[lawman123]

Flightless fruit flies can gain back their flight ability in warmer temperatures. Wingless are the most effective. Both need to be separated from WT fruit flies or else the recessive trait will be lost.

i plan on breeding flightless and or wingless fruit flies some time soon. I'll cut a plastic 1.5L coke bottle into two and invert the top half and place it on the bottom half so that the ones that can fly will enter through the small opening and be trapped on the double sided tape that I'll attach to the top half. Hopefully after not too many generations I'll have wingless fruit flies soon enough.
Any tips on how to make this easier? What other factors will induce a flightless/wingless mutation? I tried searching online but I cant find any easy to read info (there are some paywalled journals tho)

 

[moricollins]

i plan on breeding flightless and or wingless fruit flies some time soon. I'll cut a plastic 1.5L coke bottle into two and invert the top half and place it on the bottom half so that the ones that can fly will enter through the small opening and be trapped on the double sided tape that I'll attach to the top half. Hopefully after not too many generations I'll have wingless fruit flies soon enough.
Any tips on how to make this easier? What other factors will induce a flightless/wingless mutation? I tried searching online but I cant find any easy to read info (there are some paywalled journals tho)

Unless you're starting with fruit flies that cannot fly or do not have wings you are VERY unlikely to be able to have cultures that do not fly or that don't have wings.

Fruit flies don't tend to fly a lot when they don't have to but will happily climb any surface to get to a food source. You will, more than likely, just end up with all the flies at the top portion of the bottle.

Additionally, just trapping the ones that fly doesn't mean you're actually leaving ones that CANNOT fly in the other section of your bottle, only the ones that DIDN'T fly.

 

[Scorpiobsession]

If you do go with that it's unlikely to work, but it could. Give them bait at the top and make them fly towards it. The more that fly out of the ones that can fly the better. Increase their mutation rate (I think that can be accomplished by increasing temperatures, not sure).

 

[lawman123]

Unless you're starting with fruit flies that cannot fly or do not have wings you are VERY unlikely to be able to have cultures that do not fly or that don't have wings.

Fruit flies don't tend to fly a lot when they don't have to but will happily climb any surface to get to a food source. You will, more than likely, just end up with all the flies at the top portion of the bottle.

Additionally, just trapping the ones that fly doesn't mean you're actually leaving ones that CANNOT fly in the other section of your bottle, only the ones that DIDN'T fly.

as scorpiobsession said, I'm considering putting some fruit fly attractant and other baits to encourage them to fly to the trap bottle. I'm so jealous of the other countries where you can easily buy wingless fruit flies

 

[Albireo Wulfbooper]

Generally speaking the way flightless and other mutant fruit flies are generated in the lab is by exposing the embryos to mutagenic chemicals. I do not recommend this approach outside of a laboratory.

 

[lawman123]

Generally speaking the way flightless and other mutant fruit flies are generated in the lab is by exposing the embryos to mutagenic chemicals. I do not recommend this approach outside of a laboratory.

my biology course in college was doing just that. and i think they had some wingless FF cultures. I should have gotten some