Where do fruitflies come from?

[coen]

I was reading an interesting new article at The Straight Dope:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_281a.html

 

[joeri]

Is it possible to contract herpes from a hot tub or spa?

an article about a SOA?
think your link isn't completly correct

 

[coen]

Whoops sorry, linked the wrong article from the mainpage, here is the correct one!

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mfruitfly.html

 

[matthew]

Two things about fruitflies:
a) a friend of a friend (yes, one of *those* stories) came back from a holiday on a tropical island somewhere or other and said she had heard that if ingested fruitflies can have cause bowel disease in humans. I assume this is rubbish, just been itching to mention this to someone.
b) anyway, what I really wanted to say was the other day I bought a Drosophila culture from my local petshop - as I've been doing to feed young newt morphs - [they are rated number one by the animals with bloodworm-on-the-substrate second and then pinhead crickets number three]...
I decided to wait a while for more of them to hatch before popping open the lid and tipping / shaking them out.
Finally I had a really good number in there and I approached the open tanks.

I popped the lid off and in unison they all rose up in a cloud and flew out the window!

Whatever happened to the bit about "flightless"?
I can't help but think that such disappointment, such a smack in the teeth after clever planning... seemed a great metaphor for life really...

 

[joeri]

OW! So unlucky!

I've red that there are to kinds of fruitflies, those with and those without wings. When they mate the newborns will all have wings. I'm afraid you had a traitor in your camp.

 

[coen]

The ones without wings have been genetically altered. I myself have fruitflies with wings, but they can't really fly, only hop a little.

My advice is never pop the lid before your in the tank, wingless or not, these guys are pretty fast anyway.

 

[aaron]

If they get very warm, I believe that they can regain flight.

~Aaron

 

[coen]

Will an increase in warmth alter their genetical code?

 

[caleb]

There's a difference between 'wingless' (or vestigial winged) and 'flightless'. I keep two fruitfly strains at the moment- a vestigial winged Drosophila melanogaster (these have tiny stumpy wings) and a flightless D. hydei (these have fully sized wings, but cannot fly).

The flightless/wingless genes are recessive, so if they breed with flying wild-type fruitflies, the offspring will be able to fly! We do get wild D. melanogaster around our house, so I'm careful not to let any of these into my wingless melanogaster cultures. I'm not so worried about the hydei, as I've never seen any wild ones of those.

There's loads of information on fruitflies on the British Dendrobatid Group website:
http://www.thebdg.org

 

[joeri]

Intresting!
Tnx for sharing

 

[tara]

Genetic expression in flies is temperature sensitive. Not all genes are temperature sensitive, but some may be more or less active depending upon temperature .(Ever hear of heat shock genes- they turn on when temps get too warm. Many organisms have them.) It is not that the vestigial gene (vg) is temperature sensitive per say, but the genes that control the expression of vg or those that may counteract vg function may be temperature sensitive, thus altering the phenotype that we see in the flies.

It is true what Aaron said as studies on vestigial indicate that "Temperatures of 29oC or greater appreciably increase wing size (Harnly, 1936; Stanley, 1935)". This is because "A suppressor of vg on the third chromosome, su(vg), results in an almost normal phenotype at 28oC, an intermediate vg phenotype at 25oC and a strong vg phenotype (in wings and especially halteres) under 20oC (David, Javellot and Touze, 1970)".

In the case of curly winged flies (these fly poorly because of the shape of their wings) it seems that that lower temperatures also affect the level of curlyness of their wings. From my personal experience i have noticed that at cooler temps (below or around 18C) the wings get straighter.
tara

 

[matthew]

Errm, first just wanted to say my first batch of fruitflies - the unproblematic ones - were flightless but not wingless, but the wings were not curly.
Cheers for reminder re the BDG Caleb.
Good grief Tara that's amazingly detailed info. Do I detect a postgraduate, PhD thesis in there?