Question on fruit flies

[bugmankeith]

If you breed flightless fruit flies with wild type flies, will the offspring be able to fly?

 

[dtknow]

Yes. Don't bother with that.

 

[bugmankeith]

Actually i'm doing it for fun, i'm going to let the flying flies (the offspring) go outside I get a ton of fruit flies in my yard and i'm always on the lookout for mutations to breed.

 

[JLDomestics]

Even if you breed the resulting flightless fruit flies, winged flies will result.
I have 4 strains of melanogaster, and 2 strains of hydei.

 

[siliconthoughts]

Actually i'm doing it for fun, i'm going to let the flying flies (the offspring) go outside I get a ton of fruit flies in my yard and i'm always on the lookout for mutations to breed.

This is in general a really bad idea. You shouldn't be releasing lab strains of anything, even fruit flies. In this case they will most likely all die since they are maladapted for life in the wild and I for one am not seeing the fun in that.

Be a responsible hobbyist. Freeze them if you don't want them, don't take the risk of spreading disease.

Are you seriously looking for fruit fly mutations? Do you know how to anesthetize them, sort them by gender and actually do controlled breeding to fix the line? I'm guessing from your initial question you don't actually know much about fruit flies, so I'm a bit incredulous about your claim to be looking for mutations.

 

[bugmankeith]

No, i'm releasing the flying ones, (the ones I caught and the flying offspring) after they are done breeding. I keep the flightless ones.

And no I wont call myself a scientist or anything, i'm no expert on fruit flies, but if I catch a fruit fly in the wild with dark eyes, thats a mutation because it's not the normal red.

I ordered a book on how to tell gender, and if a male is old. It explains what you said about how to seperate them too and how to seperate virgin female flies. I got the book from Nasco.

Like I said this is just for fun I dont care if they all turn into normal looking/flying fruit flies, I just wanted to breed fruit flies for fun.

The flightless ones came with a black eyed male fly, so that surprised me to find one, but thats not the dark eyed one I caught.

I noticed flightless males are more aggressive and get to mate more often than wild type males, and interesting behavior I did not expect. They also go for the wild females over the flightless females.

 

[TNeal]

It's an incredibly bad idea to release any strain/hybrid into the wild. Flightless or not. People that do that sort of thing with many animal/plant species has caused severe restrictions on the ability to import and/or keep many types of animals/plants.

Be responsible and do not release anything that wasn't born in the wild where you live.

Tom